Passion

This is a hard movie to come by in the US, but if you can find it -- and you're interested in the life and music of Percy Aldridge Grainger, you're in for a treat. It's quite historically accurate. Richard Roxborough's Grainger looks astoundingly like Grainger at this period in time. Emily Woof's Karen Holten is quite a bit prettier than the real Karen, but that was an inaccuracy I was happy to discover (!). I think what really struck me though, was how well Roxborough captured Grainger's outrageous personality. Barbara Hershey's Rose was also a treasure. If she looks considerably younger than Rose did at that period, it is more than made up for in how well she captured Rose's obsession with Percy. It's an easy film to recommend. (I should note that when she saw "Passion" my wife had no particular affinity for (or knowledge of) Grainger and his music, but she was totally captivated by the film.

Melbourne born Percy Grainger (1882-1961) was a supremely talented and pretty weird musician and composer remembered musically for (English) Country Gardens, a folk song he collected, rearranged and popularised.

He was a piano virtuoso who was famous in London in the early 1900's for his rendition of Grieg's piano concerto, not to mention his alluring manner. I would imagine that there were a lot of young women at his concerts.

Passion outlines some aspects of his early life in London, concentrating mainly on Grainger's strange relationship with his mother, not to mention his rather peculiar behaviour with other women in his life. It's set in 1914 when Grainger's mother was ill.

There was a good deal of gossip about his apparently near incestuous relationship with his mother. This fellow was a piece of work.

Thankfully there's also a good deal of stirring, moving music included in this film about a musician. You certainly can't count on that happening. Hilary and Jackie about the cellist Jacqueline Du Pre and Shine which was concerned with pianist David Hefgott were both music biopics with strong Australian connections and they both failed to feature the music!

But anyway sex sells in film, much more easily than classical music, and not surprisingly Grainger's sexual strangeness is emphasised in Passion.

It seems that Percy was a great believer in the whip when it comes to sex. In fact if you should go to Melbourne it's well worth visiting the Grainger museum on Royal Parade in the Melbourne University grounds.

There you can view a selection of his whips along with a diary note documenting how he considered that flagellation is far superior to football with regards to relieving stress in the community. This boy was a forward thinker!

As well, there's a display of Grainger's music machines (hardly mentioned in the film) which are large contraptions designed to produce music automatically. There's also some of Percy's famous self made towelling clothing which is displayed with great elan in the movie as Percy jaunts along the local promenades. You'd have needed to have been very talented to get away with such behaviour in 1914 London and still prosper.

But what of the film. Richard Roxburgh as Percy Grainger gives a virtuoso performance as does Emily Woof who plays Grainger's girlfriend Karen. Roxburgh teamed previously with Passion's director Australian Peter Duncan in the interesting Children Of The Revolution.

Roxburg again in Passion exhibits unusual sensitivity and energy, although I suspect that we'd often be surprised by the abilities of many apparently staid actors if they chose to stretch themselves in so called art films.

Emily Woof along with Barbara Hershey as Percy's Mum are strong, although I didn't feel that we really got successfully inside Granger's syphillitic Mum. But then I suppose that might not have been all that attractive anyway. Australia's Claudia Karvan is interesting as the wife of Grainger's best friend, adding interest in what is a bit of a piece meal film.

Biopics are always beset by the same problem. Should the film limit itself to a cursory but expansive tale about the life of the subject, which is perhaps more the realm of the documentary, or should it concentrate on a small segment or aspect of the person's story.

It was disappointing to learn nothing about Grainger's later career or to find out more about his prodigious collections of English and Danish folk music but still Passion is above all passionate and very nicely filmed. Classical music lovers would do well to attend. Leave home the whips though, where they belong.

It's great to have supportive parents, the more so when you are a creative artist of fragile ego. But a relationship with a parent can be a crippling thing, even when the parent is aware of the danger of smothering a child with affection and preventing him from forming adult relationships. So it was for the Australian musician and composer Percy Grainger. In this film, covering a year in his life (the fatal year of 1914) and taken from a stage play, the multi-talented Percy's relationship with his mother Rose is explored. She is his devoted fan, manager and confidant. She encourages Percy, in his early thirties, to fall in love with a beautiful young talented pupil, Karin. Rose knows that the wellsprings of Percy's creativity are less than sparkling clear. Percy uses flagellation to clear his head for work, a practice Rose naturally deplores. Percy recruits his pupil to flagellation, and Rose finds out.

This film reminded me somewhat of the play and film "Amadeus" (loved by God) which showed Mozart (whose music Grainger hated to play) as a dirty-minded child whose musical genius seemed to just flow out of him without apparent effort on his part. "Amadeus" suggested that his rival Salieri was so consumed with jealousy that he brought about Mozart's death, "killing" God in the process. Grainger hears music everywhere - it just flows into him from sounds all around, and he captures and processes it. He hears a folk song being sung in a pub, or a barrow boy's call in the street and gets them down on paper. As Grainger himself says in the film, it's the folk material adaptions he will probably be best remembered for.

Like Mozart, Grainger has a supportive parent who recognises this extraordinary talent and moulds his career as a performer. Such creativity comes at a price, in Percy's case emotional over-dependence on his mother and the lash. Percy's is a pretty fragile psyche despite his cheerful manner and artistic confidence. He is a blond, athletic babe-magnet - perhaps women spot the mother's boy and go for him - but for Percy adoring fans are put there for his convenience.

Richard Roxburgh does a great job as Percy, full of nervy vitality. Barbara Hershey as Rose looks too young at first but as events take their toll she ages fast and the two of them are very convincing together. Emily Wolf plays Karin with Germanic seriousness. Towards the end the pace slows down to a crawl. It's as if the director didn't know how to finish. However "Passion" is handsomely filmed and easy to watch and listen to, with many of Percy's pieces on the soundtrack.

The world knows Percy Grainger mostly for his folksong settings: of which the one about the English country garden is probably the most popular. Some know one or two of his more individual compositions, but (I suspect) relatively few know of his early explorations of electronic music and musical ideas that place his name with the pioneers of the avant garde of twentieth century classical music.

Percy's eccentricity was matched with a tortured(sic)sexuality that embraced a close relationship with his mother and a penchant for flagellation. The brief display of the latter is( I suppose) the reason for the "R" rating.

Richard Roxburgh's performance as Percy is excellent, and (apparently) very close to the real thing. Barbara Hershey is less convincing as Rose.

In my opinion, don't be put off by the "R" rating for this film.

I am sure many of those who stumble on this release will want to find out more about Percy Grainger and what made him and his music tick.

Not a great film, but a very entertaining one. It is very much more intelligently made than some more sanitised or fictionalised attempts to depict the nature of those who brighten our lives with their creativity.

If in Melbourne : do not miss the Percy Grainger Museum in the grounds of the University of Melbourne. It has lots of Grainger "artifacts" that document how close this film -flawed as it is - manages to recreate the setting, the times and the relationship with his mother.

Percy Grainger was an important Australian composer and a wonderful pianist, and this engaging film looks at both the musical aspects of Grainger's life (such as his interest in folk music and experimentation), as well as his eccentric lifestyle (his intense relationship with his mother sparked rumours of incest, and he practised sado-masochism with his lovers).

All the actors are wonderful, especially Richard Roxburgh playing the mercurial Grainger, but also Barbara Hershey as his doting, but brittle mother with whom he often shares a bed, and Emily Woof, who plays his Danish lover who submits to his erotic whims. Claudia Karvan is also excellent as Grainger's musician friend who refuses his advances but helps him as a friend.

The film is an entertaining reminder of a largely forgotten complex musical phenomenon.