BEFORE: Meryl Streep can do it all, that's for sure. She can play the violin, she can cook like Julia Child, she can authorize a CIA suspect to be tortured. I already know she can sing because I saw her in "Mamma Mia". But can she sing badly, on purpose, which I'll wager is harder to do than singing well?
I've got to put the Jake Gyllenhaal track on hold, but I'll be circling back to him in a month or so. Just like after tonight, I'm putting the Meryl Streep track on hold too, but I'll be back to her before you know it. Those are two actors I always seem to keep coming back to. But Meryl carries over from "Rendition" for one more appearance before my Easter films.
THE PLOT: The story of Florence Foster Jenkins, a New York heiress who dreamed of becoming an opera singer, despite having a terrible singing voice.
AFTER: The answer is yes, Meryl Streep can sing badly, if she wants to. Though I think she kind of oversold that here, that was sort of the only option. I mean, if the character is a bad singer, then an actress can't play that halfway, because then you have an average singer. I think she really had to swing for the fences, go all-out and try to be really god-awful, because that was probably the only way to drive that point home. I maintain that was probably more of a challenge than the average viewer might realize. Once you know how to sing, it's hard to sing off-key, because the natural inclination is then to hit the right note, because that's what it means to sing well. It would be like learning to ride a bike and then intentionally trying to fall off, but once you know how to balance and propel yourself forward properly, the natural inclination is to keep doing that, and try NOT to fall, because you know that's going to hurt.
Florence Foster Jenkins was a real person, a socialite who played piano as a young girl, even performing at the White House for President Hayes. After expressing a desire to study music in Europe, her parents forbid that, so she eloped to Philadelphia with a Dr. Thornton Jenkins. For reasons explained in this film (no spoilers here) the marriage didn't last, and then an arm injury ended her career as a pianist. Around 1900 she moved back to New York City with her mother, began a relationship with a Shakespearean actor named St. Clair Bayfield, and inherited a large amount of money upon her father's death. She took voice lessons and joined many social clubs, acting as a sort of musical director. And as was the style of the day, performed in these sort of diorama/tableau things that were like mini-plays with costumes and music, only with minimal storylines.
According to this film, her common-law companion Bayfield spent his time making sure that her public performances were packed with only the "right kind" of music lovers, meaning those people who were either in on the joke and could keep a straight face during her singing, or who didn't know enough about music to realize that the singing was bad. Or, it seems, people who were either so desperate for entertainment that they didn't care. And if that didn't work, Bayfield wasn't above bribing everyone, including journalists, with money or free drinks to at least SAY that they had a good time.
Is this really any different from the entertainment industry today? Take a movie that's terrible - is the studio releasing it going to kill it? No way, they've already invested millions in production and promotion, so the best path forward is to still tell everyone how great it is, so they can at least recoup some money on foreign distribution or streaming rights. And then they grant journalists (or whatever they call people who work at "Entertainment Tonight") exclusive interviews with the film's stars, so they can pimp the bad movie on their shows, so they can make their ad revenue too. Think about it - when's the last time you saw a BAD review, or anything negative, on "ET"? I'm guessing never. Then there are always the possibilities that a film will catch on as a "cult classic", even if it's bad, so you just never know. My point is that there's an entire industry now, or even several of them, that count on Hollywood churning out product, so it does no one any good, usually, to point out how bad something is.
And how many actors and film directors today are similarly delusional about their own abilities? If you think about it, everyone in Hollywood thinks that they're good, or they wouldn't continue doing what they're doing, and logically they just can't all be right.
And everyone around Ms. Foster Jenkins, from her manager to her accompanist and so on down the line, they had some benefits from keeping up the charade - why bite the hand that feeds you? Hey, her pianist got to say that he played at Carnegie Hall, and once you do that, nobody can take it away, even if the singing performance was, to any impartial listener, quite horrible. Can we all recall the fact that William Hung, an average man who was a terrible singer, got an ALBUM released after stinking up the airwaves on "American Idol"? There's a certain undercurrent in the entertainment industry that's obsessed with bad movies, bad singing, you name it. I've been known to listen to some music that's just plain terrible, sometimes it's just so bad that it's good, like the lounge music fad that was popular a few years ago.
Her last performance at Carnegie (and note, Streep's character also played at Carnegie Hall in "Music of the Heart") in 1944 was done largely for the benefit of World War II soldiers (hadn't they suffered enough?) who attended in droves due to the free tickets given out, and according to this film, most of them were very drunk. But then again, they probably had to be, to appreciate this singer's talents.
But I'm still not sure WHY famous musicians and composers of the time - Cole Porter, Giancarlo Menotti, Enrico Caruso - were inspired by her, or spent so much time with her. Was it just a curiosity factor, or did they feel better about their own musical abilities after listening to such a bad singer? Were they silently mocking her, or did they respect someone who kept trying, despite an appalling lack of ability? Was she an inspiration to them, or was it more of a "There, but for the grace of God, go I" type of situation? I wish the movie could have explored this a little more.
Also starring Hugh Grant (last seen in "I'm Still Here"), Simon Helberg (last seen in "Evan Almighty"), Rebecca Ferguson (last seen in "Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation"), Nina Arianda (last seen in "The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Them"), Stanley Townsend (last seen in "Flawless"), Allan Corduner (last seen in "Moonlight Mile"), Christian McKay (last seen in "Rush"), David Haig (last seen in "Two Weeks Notice"), John Sessions (last seen in "Mr. Holmes"), Brid Brennan (last seen in "Brooklyn"), John Kavanagh (last seen in "The Invisible Woman"), Pat Starr (last seen in "Reds"), Maggie Steed, Thelma Barlow, Liza Ross (last seen in "Leap Year"), Paola Dionisotti, Rhoda Lewis, Aida Garifullina, Nat Luurtsema, Mark Arnold (last seen in "Bridget Jones's Baby"), David Mills, David Menkin, Sid Phoenix.
RATING: 6 out of 10 copies of the New York Post
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