Flamenco

 

Picture: C+     Sound: C+     Extras: C-     Film: B-

 

 

How do you explain an artform without trying to outright teach it?  Carlos Saura’s Flamenco (1994) attempts just this without dialogue or much singing, offering 21 segments that do everything possible to show the diversity and reach of the music and dance through generations and sensibilities.  It is a good film, but if you do not like the music genre or cannot find entry into it, you may find this repetitious, but then you would be missing out on a good film.

 

This is a celebration of the joy of the music in an unprecedented manner with some of the bets possible people behind and in front of the camera.  To call it a Musical would not be so far off of the mark, though there is no single narrative throughout.  Maybe an Operetta would apply, but then this is a different music genre and it is all explicitly stage-bound.  All these generic corpuses are relevant, but ultimately not as important as the content.  I just found myself a bit worn down while I was watching, though everything was very good.  In that case, the DVD’s chapters come in handy.

 

The letterboxed image is credited as anamorphic, but this copy did not offer such playback that way, though the picture quality is still fair.  Vittorio Storaro, the legendary and groundbreaking cinematographer, shot this entire film, which always looks great.  It is one thing to shoot the outdoors in films like The Conformist and Apocalypse Now (both versions of the Francis Coppola film), but another to do indoors, but Storaro proves he can do both.  The otherwise empty Dick Tracy (1990) looked good, thanks to Storaro.  He also pushes the limits and capacities of film, but not much of that is offered here.  This is absolutely a cut above what most Music Videos, past and present, offer.

 

Though the film was a Dolby Digital 5.1 release theatrically, this version is in simple stereo at best, with no surrounds to get out of Pro Logic.  That is odd.  New Yorker has had some winners in the past sound wise and the music is vital here.  It still sounds good enough, but there are some limits that should not be here.  Could the original Dolby have had problems?  That would not be a surprise.

 

Extras include info. on Saura and Storaro, facts file on Flamenco, and a few trailers, though not one for this film.  The only thing that would have made this better would have been a documentary on the music beyond the facts offered and a discography of commercially and critically successful artists in the genre today (see my DVD-Audio review for Esteban elsewhere on this site), but then perhaps this was supposed to be about how this is “the people’s music” in some profound sense.

 

For a music film, you cannot go wrong with Flamenco, as long as you have the interest.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo