The White Crow

The White Crow (2018) is a British movie directed by Ralph Fiennes. The film is a biography of Rudolf Nureyev from his early years until he has to make a decision about whether or not to request asylum at the Paris airport. Much has been made about whether Nureyev should have been portrayed by an actor, who is not a ballet dancer, or a ballet dancer, who is not an actor. Director Fiennes chose Oleg Ivenko to portray Nureyev. He's a great dancer, and his acting skills are excellent. Good choice. Ralph Fiennes himself portrays Nureyev's dance teacher, Pushkin. As a famous actor--and as the director--he also gets star billing. However, his role isn't that major. Adèle Exarchopoulos plays Clara Saint, Nureyev's friend in Paris. (Apparently, that part of the film is very accurate.) Chulpan Khamatova is a talented actor who portrays Pushkin's wife. The film works as a thriller and a dance movie. The situation at the Paris airport is intense. There are incredible, long, dance sequences throughout. It also gives a sense of Nureyev the person. He was, indeed, a "white crow." He didn't fit in with anyone else. He was cruel to almost everyone he knew. He was the greatest dancer or his era, so people tolerated his behavior because they loved his art. Director Fiennes likes to move back and forth in time without giving any warning by using jump cuts. After the first one or two times, I found that I got used to them, and I wasn't bothered by this technique. This movie has a terrible IMDb rating of 6.4. One of the reasons it's so low is that male raters hated it. Women raters gave it a 7.1. However, as is typical of IMDb ratings, there are twice as many men raters than women raters. We saw this film at Rochester's excellent Little Theatre. Because of the many dance sequences, The White Crow will certainly work better on a large screen. Even so, if you're a dance enthusiast, it's a must-see movie, so see it in any format you can find. If you're not a dance enthusiast, see the movie anyway. It's fascinating. Here's a situation where I say, "Don't trust the low IMDb rating. The raters must have seen a different White Crow than the one I saw." Find it and watch it.

Greetings again from the darkness. Nijinsky. Nureyev. Bruhn. Baryshnikov. The legends of male ballet dancers starts with that list, and possibly include a handful of others. Ralph Fiennes directs a screenplay from David Hare that brings us the story of how one of these, Rudolph Nureyev, defected from Russia to the west in 1961. Opening with Nureyev's teacher Alexander Pushkin being interrogated ("Why did he defect?") by a Russian official immediately after the defection, the film ping pongs between 3 time frames in an attempt to better explain Nureyev's reasons ... or at least the background that created such a headstrong and talented young man. We flashback to 1938 where his mother famously gave birth to him in the confines of a moving train (traveling and trains remained important to him). We then flash forward to 1961 when Nureyev arrives in Paris with the Kirov Ballet, and then back to 1955 as he arrives at the Vaganova Academy of Russian Ballet (established 1738) - a prestigious dance school. It's actually this hopping from one time frame to another that is the film's weakness. The script is ambitious but ultimately flawed, as it attempts to tackle too much rather than concentrating on what's most important and interesting. We didn't need so many childhood flashbacks to grasp that Nureyev was a different kind of kid who grew up in poverty in Siberia, raised with his sisters by a mother whose husband was away at war. Julie Kavanagh's book "Rudolph Nureyev: The Life" inspired Mr. Hare's screenplay, but the multiple timelines can be more fully explored in book form. Ralph Fiennes plays the aforementioned Pushkin, a soft-spoken man who was a father figure to Nureyev, as well as a technical instructor. He also shared his philosophy of dance (and his wife - maybe he knew, maybe he didn't) with his star pupil, and it's easy to see how this elevated Nureyev's ability. Combining that with his interest in classic art, a theme of turning ugliness into beauty was something Nureyev latched on to. Oleg Ivenko stars as Rudolph Nureyev. Ivenko is a marvelous dancer and bears enough resemblance to the legend that we are quickly taken in. Ivenko is not a trained film actor, but as a dancer, he is accustomed to the spotlight and never wavers in his portrayal of a dancer he likely admired. He captures the emotional turmoil of a man enticed by the artistic and social freedoms of the west, while also remaining loyal to his homeland - loyal at least until he felt threatened (both physically and artistically). A tortured genius typically struggles with those in positions of authority and that's on full display here. This is the third directorial outing for 2-time Oscar nominee (for acting) Ralph Fiennes. His previous projects were THE INVISIBLE WOMAN in 2013 which no one saw, and CORIOLANUS in 2011 which almost no one saw. It's likely his latest won't draw a huge audience either, but Ivenko's dancing is quite something to behold, and the climax at Le Bourget Airport in France is a suspenseful highlight. Nureyev was 23 at the time, and the defection decision is made almost spontaneously with a little help from his socialite friend Clara Saint (Adele Exarchapoulos, BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOR) and French dancer Pierre Lacotte (Raphael Personnaz). Rudolph Nureyev died of complications from AIDS in 1993, but he truly was a "white crow" - something extraordinary, and one who stands out.

Ralph Fiennes foray into direction started with a modernized adaption of a lesser known Shakespeare play, Coriolanus. In between this and his latest effort (White Crow) was a rather unextraordinary effort about Charles Dickens, but his latest effort is notable for Fiennes working in another language, albeit one he speaks fairly well. Still I can't think of many British directors that make films in a different language. White Crow is about legendary ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev (Oleg Ivenko) and his defection from the Soviet Union to the West whilst on a tour in Paris. Fiennes' film about the iconic ballet dancer was never going to be a film about the dancing, this is clear because of the time period the film focuses on. Due to the fact that the film focuses on the period of time where Rudolf defected from the USSR the film is about the different ideologies of communist USSR the capitalist West, their different ways of life and different levels of personal choice and freedom granted to its citizens. In the regard the film is an interesting watch as it compares the two worlds. The reaction of the tour group to Paris when they first arrived was one of wonder at this world of culture and freedom. Nureyev's reaction is central to the film as he makes the most of the chance to explore the city of Paris. He visits the celebrated art galleries, marveling at the masterpieces restricted by his regime. Emphasis is added to the French motto Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité emblazed on the statue in the center of Place de la Republique to highlight what is nonexistent in his homeland. The tour group make the most of this chance to experience the freedom of the West. The freedom to shop, watch great theatre in the grandest of buildings and drink merrily into the night. But there's always the threat of the KBG and their bureaucrats attempting to stamp out any threat of westernization that may infect and topple the regime. There is always an uneasy feeling leering over Nureyev anytime he doesn't tow the party line, especially when he becomes more acquainted with his new western friends. As the film is more about the politics than the dancing I do feel the ballet was neglected. I knew nothing of the man before the film and I never convincingly sold as to why people considered him the greatest male dancer of his generation. Only experts can tell the difference between a good dancer and a great dancer and whilst the film highlighted Nureyev's ability to dominate the stage I still never fully understood what made him so great. The dancing is still important to the film, and the ballet scenes are beautifully filmed. Oleg Ivenko is a dancer himself so I am comfortable in the authenticity of these scenes, but I felt he was more at home when dancing or speaking in his native language then he was speaking English. His performance is good, but at times I felt he was slightly wooden when speaking in English (but the scene in the airport is an incredible sequence). Any with scene with his German boyfriend was painful to watch due to the blandness of their chemistry. It's an impressive effort from Fiennes who clearly took this project to heart looking deeply into the heart of the matter as to why Nureyev defected from his homeland.

A biopic about Rudolf Nureyev: gifted with an exemplary technique, he is considered as the greatest classical dancer and as one of the greatest choreographers. The actors Oleg Ivenko and Chulpan Khamatova are excellent whereas Ralph Fiennes is magnificent with a masterful interpretation of Alexander Pushkin, with restraint and sensitivity. He literally impressed me! Nevertheless, as a director, Ralph Fiennes is less convincing. He excessively insists on the haughty and unpleasant character of Rudolf Nureyev, to such a point that we almost want to slap him. In addition, the manifold alternations between the trip to Paris in 1961 (the present time) and the flashbacks (his childhood in a poor family and his debut as a dancer) are almost disturbing. I would have appreciated that Ralph Fiennes develops these different points: 1) An evocation of the trip to Vienna in 1959, formerly Western Europe, followed by a formal ban on all abroad travel formulated by the Russian Minister of Culture, which could have explained, without justifying, the oppressive and stifling behavior of the KGB members, in Paris in 1961. 2) A less dark presentation of the Soviet Union reduced to KGB members as obtuse as omnipotent. Indeed, at the beginning of the 60s, the Soviet aura was supreme: culture, science, geopolitical influence, ... For instance, the dramatic Nureyev's defection at the Paris Le Bourget Airport happened just two months after the Bay of Pigs invasion which was a significant failure for Kennedy's US foreign policy and a strong reinforcement of the relations between Cuba and the Soviet Union. As a synthesis, the movie is excellently interpreted but the realization is slightly muddleheaded. 6/7 of 10.

The film's title derives from the Russian phrase "belaya vorona", or "white crow", meaning an outsider or nonconformist, a person who stands out from his or her contemporaries in the way that a white crow would stand out from its black fellows. The "white crow" of this film is the Russian ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev, a man who had difficulty conforming to the official Soviet system, either in his artistic life or in his personal life. (He was gay at a time when this was neither lawful nor acceptable in Soviet society). Nureyev shocked the world of ballet when he defected to the West at Le Bourget airport, Paris, in 1961, and the film is built around this incident. His decision to defect was, apparently, a spontaneous one, taken when the Communist authorities, irritated by the fact that he had spent much of his time in Paris in the company of Western intellectuals and concerned by rumours that he had been seen in a gay bar, decided to send him back to Russia rather than allowing him to travel with the Kirov ballet to London, the next leg of their tour. Scenes of Nureyev's stay in Paris are intercut with flashbacks to his poverty-stricken wartime childhood in the provincial city of Ufa and to his time as a ballet student in Leningrad, as St Petersburg was then known. The film was directed by the well-known British actor Ralph Fiennes, clearly a ballet enthusiast. Fiennes also takes an acting role as Alexander Pushkin- not, of course, the classic Russian author but Nureyev's tutor at the Kirov Ballet. This was, I felt, one of two outstanding performances in the film. Pushkin emerges not only as a visionary who spotted Nureyev's talent when many did not but also as a sympathetic father-figure who provided the young dancer with a kindness and understanding that was otherwise lacking in the rigid, inflexible Soviet system. The other great performance, of course, comes from the young Oleg Ivenko as the conflicted Nureyev himself. On the one hand he is held by a love of his Russian homeland, the land which contains all he knows and all that he has held dear- his family, his friends and his mentor Pushkin. On the other hand, he is drawn towards the West, not only because of the greater intellectual freedom which it offers but also because of a feeling that it is only there that he can fully realise himself as a dancer. I must admit that I am not a great balletomane myself; I have been to the ballet on only a handful of occasions in my life, and never saw Nureyev dance except on television. Yet there are some films which have been good enough able to hold my attention even though they are centred upon activities in which I would normally take little interest. Like most Britons, I know little about baseball, yet I was enthralled by "Eight Men Out" and "Field of Dreams". I probably know even less about wrestling, but that did not prevent me from admiring the more recent "Foxcatcher". "White Crow" comes into the same category. Those who love ballet will doubtless be enthralled by it. Even those of us who do not will be able to see enough in this movie to understand the enthusiasm of those who do. And both groups will join together in their appreciation of the human drama which lies at the heart of Rudolf Nureyev's story. 8/10

The White Crow