January 2 - 9, 1997
[Movie Reviews]
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Evita, the CD

Madonna marches on Washington?

by Michael Freedberg

If your taste in music runs to things Byzantine you'll probably find Evita: The Complete Motion Picture Soundtrack (Warner Bros.) temporarily fulfilling. The music, by Andrew Lloyd Webber, puffs a hundred voices up, glistens with melodic mosaic, worships the power of its icon, Eva Perón. Appropriately so: she was the Theodora of our time, a low-rent thespian who caught the eye of Juan Perón, fascist dictator of Argentina, married him, and became his vice-president -- just like the original Theodora caught the eye of Justinian, married him, and, when he became emperor at Constantinople, ruled jointly with him.

Unhappily for those who love icons, Evita fell far short. She knew nothing about power and had no program; the street-level feminism her rapid rise gave birth to was never her idea. The real Theodora toughened Justinian's rule, chose and deposed ministers of state, and patronized the high arts. She was a superb judge of character; the ministers she chose were men of talent and courage. Evita, in contrast, was a true naif. For all her "hunger and ambition," as the song "Another Suitcase in Another Hall" puts it, once she had all the adoration there was to be had, she felt undeserving. The lines in the musical's hit song, "Don't Cry for Me Argentina," in which she is made to say, "All you see is a girl you once knew although she's dressed up to the nines, at sixes and sevens with you," sum up her situation precisely.

It's hard to imagine sentiments more unlike the hard-edged realism of Theodora than Eva Perón's. If she was anything, she was fragility and hope, the innocence that our hypocritical civilization pretends to seek. Her glamour was innocent, her rise was a Peter Pan's flight, her early death a touching martyrdom. She had feelings. Her fans loved her because she had them. At least that was the myth. The reality was corruption and robbery on a grand scale.

Too bad, then, that Andrew Lloyd Webber's Evita is played by Madonna. Not that she can't execute the role, because she can and does. In "Don't Cry for Me Argentina" she sings a softly lush soprano that captures Evita's quiet vulnerability. Her full-lipped, precise notes stride across the song's grandiose orchestrations. Webber's songs allow Madonna all the room she needs to be many things; she succeeds at them all. "On the Balcony of the Casa Rosada" and "Partido Feminista" require that she master Evita's speechmaking style; from "Buenos Aires" to "Goodnight and Thank You," she defends her dignity, fights the difficult music, argues her case as if she and it were dancing the tango (and Madonna has always known how to dance).

But chiefly Madonna inhabits Evita's "need to be dazzling," as "High Flying, Adored" states it. She invests Evita's brief fling with renown with an enthusiastic, very Madonna-like hurry that the real Evita probably didn't share but which makes sense here because Madonna's career parallels much of Evita's and in some respects trumps it. It's Madonna's sense of rhythm we want to hear, her blowzy soprano, her costumery and raunch. Eva Perón rose and fell and was gone, but Madonna's career has thrived for 14 years and seems likely to go on and on, riding her flawless ear for rebellious melody even as her contemptible personal life shamelessly feeds the tabloid appetite. Eva Perón had a heart. A Theodora figure cannot have heart. The Theodoras of this world have work to do, deadlines to meet, glass ceilings to crash. Madonna has always done her work. And she definitely crashes glass ceilings. She's a profit center. She does what she wants to do. She's boobs and smarts and headline news and a fan club, and she's hard cold cash. And if, unlike Justinian's Theodora, she hasn't yet shown the slightest interest in political power, Madonna playing the role of Evita evokes plenty of political symbolism for a society in love with icons and anxious to adore them. As Madonna pushes, glides, and muses her way upward through Webber's Evita score, the setting may be Buenos Aires but the listener whispers "Washington." As she soars through speeches to the Partido Feminista women who worship her, the dialect may be Perónista, but the listener thinks, "It's Hillary!"

That's the icon that really matters here. And the profit center. Theodora would approve.

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