Chevalier (2022)

• Year: 2022
• Released: 06 Apr 2023
• Country: United States
• Adwords: 1 nomination
• IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt12758486/
• Rotten Tomatoes: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/chevalier
• Metacritics: https://www.metacritic.com/movie/chevalier
• Available in: 720p, 1080p, 2160p
• Language: English
• MPA Rating: PG-13
• Genre: Biography, Drama, History
• Runtime: 108 min
• Writer: Stefani Robinson
• Director: Stephen Williams
• Cast: Kelvin Harrison Jr., Samara Weaving, Lucy Boynton
• Keywords: biography, violinist, based on true story,

	6.6/10
	67/100
	83% – Critics
	50% – Audience

Chevalier Storyline

Based on the incredible true story of composer Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges. The illegitimate son of an African slave and a French plantation owner, Bologne (Kelvin Harrison Jr. in a tour de force performance) rises to improbable heights in French society as a celebrated violinist-composer and fencer, complete with an ill-fated love affair and a falling out with Marie Antoinette (Lucy Boynton) herself and her court.

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Chevalier Movie Reviews

Beautiful but Bland

Imagine a prime time soap opera with 18th Century French period piece trappings, and you’ve pretty much got the gist of this fact-based (and loosely so, I understand), underwhelming offering from filmmaker Stephen Williams, a director best known for his acclaimed cable TV series work (which is probably why this release feels so much more like a television piece than a movie). The picture presents the biography of Joseph Bologne (Kelvin Harrison Jr.), the Chevalier de Saint-Georges, an acclaimed multiracial violinist and composer who rose through the social ranks to attain a celebrated place in the court of Marie Antoinette (Lucy Boynton) in pre-revolutionary France. But, rather than focusing on Bologne’s accomplishments (many of which have been lost over time but are allegedly traceable), the film instead tells the scandalous (for the time) tale of a failed interracial romance and its fallout, a story that deeply affected him personally and changed the artist into an advocate for society’s downtrodden (noble ambitions that, regrettably, receive short shrift in the film). While all of this should provide the makings of a captivating watch, much of it falls dreadfully flat – a collection of pretty images populated with arrogant, elegant aristocrats casting knowing glances and wry smiles but not providing significant fodder for viewer engagement. Such blandness even spills over into the performances, like that of protagonist Harrison, an actor whose work I generally admire but who comes across here to be about as interesting as a bowl of lukewarm porridge. To me, it seems like so much more could have been done with this story, but what comes from it here is stunningly uninteresting and uninvolving, a disappointment given that Bologne deserves better than this.

Great story, so poorly told

Apparently, one of the (main?) drivers of the French Revolution was racial equity. Who knew? This is a new Hollywood trend: you transpose current (broadly accepted) societal views into different geographies, cultures and historical periods, basically to prove that they always were eternal. Women Talking, The Woman King are two recent examples of this trend. Art has always been used to convey the ideas of its time, and there’s really nothing wrong with it. Except when you pretend that what you’re depicting is historically accurate, in which case it becomes revisionism or cultural imperialism. As a violinist and a person who lived in Paris for four years, the cultural imperialism in this film may upset me a bit more than most. But I could actually go with it if the movie were good. But it’s not.

The story is actually amazing. Imagine: a black violinist and composer in 18th century France. A man of color who was a contender to become head of the Paris Opera under Louis XVI, and who then became a leader in the French Revolution. One can only dream of what this film could have been in the hands of Spike Lee, Jordan Peele or even better Ladj Ly. It could (should) have been an exploration of the character, his motivations, what it was like to be a person of color in the court of Louis XVI, how he truly embraced revolutionary values and how they reflected on his own condition. What do we get instead from Stephen Williams? An attempt to remake Amadeus with a black character. The plagiarism is so overt that many times you feel as if you were watching segments of Amadeus again, with a few dashes of Kubrick’s Barry Lindon here and there. Except that Williams is no Milos Forman and no Stanley Kubrick. His film, weighed down by its narrow program of easy answers we all knew before going into the theatre, is dull and empty, and the characters, without the freedom to exist in their own right, increasingly feel like figures at a wax museum.

One can only hope that a real filmmaker will retake this story and turn it into the film of relevance that it should be.

Historical Hodgepodge

Joseph Bologne, known by his title the Chevalier de Saint-Georges, was an interesting minor musical figure (and more) in late 18th-century France. American Founding Father John Adams described him as “the most accomplished man in Europe in Riding, Running, Shooting, Fencing, Dancing, Musick.” Such a colorful character deserves a fine, exciting biographical film. He does not get it here. For the most part, CHEVALIER is anachronistic and uses St. Georges as an excuse to project the usual faddish sociopolitical cliches. Many details of the movie are pure fiction (St. Georges’ infant son was not murdered) and in many cases decidedly ahistorical. The fact is that most of us don’t know much about racial attitudes in France at this time, but the filmmakers take the liberty of reducing most of the white Parisians to racist caricatures; St. Georges himself is degraded by the end of the film to a sad, pathetic punching bag. The film feels unfinished, as if the screenwriter just decided to throw in the towel at the crucial moment of St Georges’ career.

If CHEVALIER was intended to be of interest to the classical music community, it failed miserably on this count too. The filmmakers appear to have no serious engagement with classical music or culture generally. St. Georges own music is not central to the film, indeed is barely heard. What little period music we hear is performed with some degree of authenticity, but it amounts to no more than a few short soundbites. At the climactic scene in the theater, St. Georges strikes up the orchestra and they play not anything 18th-century but some kind of postmodern movie music. The filmmakers are not interested in St Georges as an artist. Only his social status and racial identity interest them.

I am seeing a pattern in historical films these days where writers take an obscure subject, compile some basic research, then embellish the material beyond recognition, superimposing postmodern lingo and sensibilities. Such distortions of history do real harm in an era when few people take the trouble to read historical literature (i.e., firsthand sources) to learn about the past, instead relying on simplistic cliches and pat generalizations from movies and TV.