4
Director: Tim Slade Stars: Sayaka Shoji, Niki Vasilakis, Lin Cho-Liang, Pekka Kuusisto
Reviewed by WENDY RAWADY
4 is, sadly, as clichéd as its subject matter.
If you are going to make a documentary about a subject that is considered a major musical cliché, Vivaldi's Four Seasons, then surely it would be a good idea to shy away from the obvious and attack it with some deeper and more interesting visual and narrative materials. Alas! 4, the doco from Vast Productions, has not thought deeper than depicting the documentary through much more than a look at, well, the four seasons in four countries, through four sets of eyes, all sawing away at their violins and swaying far too much as they play. There are so many potential layers to Vivaldi's work that it is annoying to see so much time spent on the shallow, dumbed down approach. The hairs on my neck (yes, there are some!) rose with more continuity than many of the accompanying chamber orchestras when each of the interviewees snuck in a mention of Climate Change, Melting Icecaps, Global Warming, 9/11 and Peace on Earth and I began to wonder whether what I was watching was actually the interview stage of the Miss Universe competition.
The question is 'why, when there are so many names attached to this production, and when there has been a travel budget, this documentary suffers from a lack of direction?'. There was not a sign of a directorial vision. Styleless, it limps along at a dragging pace. I'm not saying that style over substance would have been advised, but there was little substance either. How about some of the weirder expressions of the music? The Tokyo Flute Ensemble, for starters. The early Moog synthesized versions, the versions you can put on your phone, computer alerts, car horns, Glass Harmonica etc.. The acknowledgment that it is a hackneyed, well-worn piece was never there. The softly spoke Miss Sayaka Shoji and her primary school analysis of the piece should have been deleted. The blank expressions of the class said it all. Cherry Blossom Time came across as nothing romantic or spectacular due to its clumsy and visionless framing. Then there was Aussie violinist Niki Vasilakis doing the Ghan trip to play on Thursday Island. How much more exciting would it have been to hear a couple of the island's amazing musos hammering out their own version! New York featured Chio-Liang 'Jimmy' Lin and the best thing about his segment was the deli, Barney Greengrass (yum!) but there, perhaps, the directors could have integrated some of the weirder uses of the music.
Pekka Kuusisto is an exciting musician to watch, being 2 parts Nigel Kennedy, 1 part Eminem and 2 parts Joshua Bell with the spunk factor of Richard Tognetti. The segment was far too long for its story elements and yawns were passed around the cinema. Here I felt a great need for some Sibelius to match the snowy landscapes and fortunately repaired to my car where Symphony No. 2 was ready in my CD player.
Now I am not carping about this doco, its crafters and writing them all off. I think that it is as much about the funding process, the assumption these days that it is necessary to make films as one-strand and simple as possible with a logline that measures no further than a single line. The lack of depth in 4 is typical of the SBS style of 'new director' doco, meddled with, under-funded and lacking in any brave intelligence.
After all, nobody mentioned why it is that, as a work, The Four Seasons has the potential to be both annoying as hell as well as engaging, nor was its composition history touched on. Surely there was a moment for this and a heck of a lot more stuff that would have lifted this beyong the 'Musak for the big screen' that our film bodies are funding year after year.
It will have a theatrical release - but I think it lacks the balls to deserve it.
Stay at home and watch it on telly when you can knit or dust the lounge-room at the same time.