Hit play, close your eyes and listen.
The libretto,”Ebben? Ne andrò lontana.” is from an aria of La Wally, an opera composed by Alfredo Catalani. Performed by American soprano Wilhelmenia Fernandez, the song is a major character in Diva. A recording of it twists its way into many lives including the performer, the diva Cynthia Hawkins, who never wanted it to exist. The fan who surreptitiously created it is pulled in different directions as there’s a far more dangerous other set of players with their own tape and as these things are wont to do in movies, their paths cross. The star of that far less beautiful recording also wishes that the tape be removed from the world, but he demands that happen along with any lives that get in the way.
The story of the opera, La Wally is about love and how who we love is often not a choice of free will, about how the world complicates matters of the heart and that with love sometimes tragedy follows. The aria the diva sings is one of sadness and longing. Of a desire to be free from the pain of the heart not being able to reconcile the differences of what it desires from what it can have. If you listen to it knowing this little bit, it will invite you into it even more deeply. To quote Wonker The Estivating Hibernian,
“The thing about opera is it transcends language. You get the feel even when you can’t decipher the lyrics. You get a whole ‘nother layer with understanding the lyrics. As any Swiftie knows.”
Within the film people who are not opera people are introduced to it through the recording of the diva’s aria. As you watch them you see it in their faces, the moment that feeling hits, that seeing of the pureness of sound produced by one human. It helps to understand why Jules has such dedication to protecting it.
May contain spoilers.
Three strands woven together as a French braid. The opera strand of the movie is the diva’s story. Her refusal to be recorded and her manager’s reminder that she is not getting younger. Her dilemma is compounded by the fact that the tape has been made without her knowledge. There are many who would want to have it and those people have less emotionally motivated intentions than those of Jules, they are motivated by greed.
The second being of mobsters and bad cops, murder and a tape that could expose it all. It is the story of a woman risking everything to expose the truth, with her words the sword that could slay an evil man. A powerful man who plays both sides of the law and traffics in human misery.
The third being of the fan, Jules, who has been swallowed by his passionate love for the creative beauty that is the diva’s singing. His feelings are so strong that they may harm what he adores the most as he attempts to possess an ideal which cannot be possessed. But the heart wants what the heart wants and that fucker never seems to listen to reason.
It all comes crashing together with a moped chase through the Paris Métro, some gunfire, some blackmail, some trickery, an explosion and the bad guys getting around to the find out portion of FAFO.
It lands almost where it started, as the tape is played for the diva and she is the one listening to the beautiful music for the first time.
Starring Wilhelmenia Fernandez , Frédéric Andréi, Thuy An Luu, Dominique Pinon, Richard Bohringer and Chantal Deruaz. Directed by Jean-Jacques Beineix.
Diva is available on Prime for $3.79. YouTube, Google Play and Apple TV for $3.99.
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Pop le-popcorn et apprécier!
Tonight’s cartoon is Walt Disney Animation Studios’ Steamboat Willie, (1928.) With Mickey Mouse as the recently free Willie, as explained by Dok Zoom: Thanks To Public Domain, You’re Now Free To Draw Dicks On 1928 Mickey Mouse. (More Like PUBIC Domain, Amirite?)
