In which I trash "Mr. Holland's Opus"

WARNING: if you're a fan of "Mr. Holland's Opus" and are prone to high blood pressure, this post may not be for you...

A few months ago I wrote about the recent film Whiplash  I'm not a film critic, and that post was not a review; it was more of a description of my personal reaction to the music-school traumas the movie depicted.

Typical student orchestra, though that's not Mr. Holland.
photo by Anthony B.

This post is also about a movie, though in this case one from 1995: the Richard Dreyfuss vehicle Mr. Holland's Opus. Again, my purpose is to convey my personal reaction to a movie that won wide acclaim back in the day. Roger Ebert gave it 3.5 stars out of 4 and called it "very moving".

My wife liked it. My circle of friends at that time liked it. Maybe you like it.

Me? I HATE, HATE, HATE THIS MOVIE.

As I sat in the theater watching it upon its release, my hopes buoyed by strong reviews, I alternated between squirming impatiently and slumping in disappointment. I shall explain.

This film, by the way, was not Dreyfuss's first venture in the realm of movies with a classical music theme. In 1980, he and Amy Irving starred in a feature called The Competition about two pianists trying to make their mark in an international piano competition. I remember the artificiality of the crisis facing Dreyfuss's character: having failed to take the top prize in two previous contests, this one was his "last chance"; if he didn't come in first, he would be condemned to teaching beginning piano to inner-city children. This, of course, ignores the reality that, quite often, the 2nd and 3rd place winners in major competitions go on to careers far outstripping the ones who take top honors. Also: 1) just why would he not be eligible to apply for college jobs, or build a prestigious private studio? and 2) what's wrong with teaching inner-city kids, anyway?

But enough of that one: my sharpest rebukes I save for good ol' Mr. Holland. If you never saw it, the brief synopsis is this: Mr. Holland is a brilliant young composer who is sure to become the next Leonard Bernstein. Faced with a family to support and bills to pay, he takes a job as a high school music teacher, certain that it's only temporary until he achieves Lennie-status. The years roll by, he becomes dedicated to the job in spite of himself, all the while spending his spare time working on the big orchestral masterpiece he dreams of completing. As he nears retirement, his dreams unrealized, many of his grateful former students return to present him with a gift of appreciation: they perform the aforementioned orchestral masterpiece. Tears of joy flood Mr. Holland's wrinkled cheeks. The end. Sounds heartfelt and inspiring, right?

Big giant MEH over here.

Here are my problems with this stupid, stupid movie.

1. THE "WOW, WHAT A DIFFERENCE!" DEVICE
Movies and TV shows always exaggerate EVERYTHING. In medical dramas, diseases that take months to develop in real life reach the critical stage in days or even hours. In cop shows,bad guys fire an armory's worth of ammo at the hero without ever hitting him, yet he kills his enemy with a single shot from across a parking lot. Makes a better story, I get that.

The equivalent in Mr. Holland is the completely ridiculous transformation he brings about in the student orchestra. His first rehearsal on Day 1 of his new job is mind-bendingly awful. It's cacophony. Are they students or chimpanzees? They certainly sound as if none of them have ever attempted to play their instruments before. Cut to a scene in the not-distant future. The level of playing now approaches the Berlin Philharmonic. It's not just improved; it's completely professional, at least as I remember the scene. Give me a break.

It would have been perfectly possible - and reasonable! - to document an improvement in the students' playing without having them play at an insanely polished level of artistry. We would still have gotten the point that he's a really good teacher.

2, THE ICKY, ICKY DOOMED LOST LOVE
Midway through his career as an educator, Mr. Holland develops a close relationship with a talented student; a student who (we are to understand) is "going places". Her name is Rowena. Rowena knocks 'em dead at a student concert singing Gershwin, as I recall. Of course, the student band backing her up sounds like it could open at the Bellagio in Vegas because that Mr. Holland really knows his stuff! What follows is an episode meant to tug at our heartstrings. Rowena and her teacher have a powerful mutual attraction, despite Mr. Holland having a wife and special-needs child at home. Unspoken yet deep, deep feelings are conveyed through meaningful glances and sighs and so on. Eventually, Rowena bids her hometown goodbye, heading off to the big city to take Broadway by storm. A bittersweet moment of farewell passes between the young star-to-be and the sensitive instructor who molded her gifts. Farewell!

STOP IT! JUST STOP IT! MR. HOLLAND SHOULD BE FIRED. SHE WAS A STUDENT AND HE WAS 10-15 YEARS OLDER THAN HER. It wasn't romantic - it was CREEPY. It was PEDOPHILIA. The trouble with the movie was that this longing was glorified in a patently false and unrealistic way. Shame on Mr. Holland, and shame on Mr. Holland's Opus.

3. BAD CASTING IN A SUPPORTING ROLE.
The film required Mr. Holland to have a best friend-slash-confidante on the faculty, someone to share his ups and downs with. That fell to the varsity football coach, played by Jay Thomas. I recall also seeing Mr. Thomas, a perfectly fine character actor, on an episode of Law and Order SVU, in which he played a weasel of a shyster attorney involved in shady business deals. In THAT role he was perfectly cast. He was about as convincing as a football coach as, say, Woody Allen would have been.

And finally, most importantly,

YOU WORKED ON THAT PIECE OF CRAP FOR 30 YEARS???
The film makes a big deal out of the masterpiece-in-progress to which our hero remains devoted. When other men use evenings to watch TV and weekends to play golf, Mr. Holland is at his desk, poring over sheaves of manuscript paper, scribbling notes with what amounts to a good case of OC disorder. So, in other words, the build-up to the climactic performance in the movie's finale is immense. My god, the effort he put into this thing approaches what Wagner went through in creating the damn Ring cycle. This better be one heck of a piece! I want majesty! I want eloquence! I want substance!

Didn't get it.

This "opus" turned out to be about 5 minutes (or less) of unimaginably puerile elevator music. It sounded more like something one of his high school students might have written than "the world's most tragically undiscovered genius".

Now, it would be one thing if the movie had been acknowledged the awfulness of the music; if its low quality had forced Mr. Holland into an epiphany of self-awareness, causing him to realize that his true talent was that of a teacher; that all these years he'd been under delusions about his talent as an artist.

But no - this performance was his moment of REDEMPTIVE TRIUMPH! The world finally got to hear his magnificent music in all its.... uh... magnificence!

Mr. Holland, you aren't who you think you are. Sorry, brother, but each of us must face the realities of our limitations at some point.

I've never met anyone who was not inclined to give this movie a pass because it celebrated music education and made a hero of a devoted teacher and drew attention to the arts and..... You get the idea.

But I give it no pass. The actual music Mr. Holland composed seemed to me to carry the message that "this kind of music is for the birds. Take a crack at a rock band - at least you might make some coin instead of ending up an old man with nothing to show for it except the world's most lame symphony."

That concludes this rant! And really, if you loved kindly Mr. Holland, I regret any annoyance I may have caused.

Turandot in Rome: a fond, if blurry, memory.

The year was 1999.

I spent the month of July in Italy as a guest artist at the Operafestival di Roma, where I'd been invited to sing the role of Don Alfonso in a production of Così fan tutte and serve as Chorus Master. (I would return to the festival eleven years later, an experience I chronicled at length in my book The Opera Zoo: Singers, Composers and Other Primates.) With the food, the friends, the food, the sights, the food, the music, and the food, ....it was a great month. But I digress.

The Stadio Olimpico, Rome, Italy

The Rome Opera had their own production in the works: Puccini's Turandot. I remember that tickets were pretty inexpensive; was it ten lire? Fifteen? I can't recall, nor do I remember the conversion rate, though I know it favored the dollar. Anyway, a bunch of us decided to go on one of our rare evenings off.

This was an outdoor production; the venue was the Stadio Olimpico, a giant structure dating from the 1930's that had been rebuilt nine years earlier to be a modern soccer palace with a capacity of some 75,000. It's located north and slightly west of the city on the Viale dei Gladiatori, which seems appropriate for both sports: calcio and opera

A bus carried us the three and a half miles (5.8 KM if you want to get all European about it) from the hotel Domus Pacis, later known as the Hotel Torre Rosso and now, it seems as the Church Village. We forked over lire notes and climbed into the stadium, scrambling for seats with the best view.

Now, granted: Turandot was created to be opera on an epic scale - a genuine spectacle. But what greeted us at the Stadio was a sight I'd never seen before and don't expect to see again.

One stage? Nope.

Two stages? Try again.

Amazingly, there were THREE FULL-SIZED STAGES BACK-TO-BACK-TO-BACK, filling the length of the playing field. Pardon my lack of artistic talent, but something like this:

This allowed the director to work with an amazing number of human bodies comprising chorus and extras. During the big crowd scenes, I had the sense that if they'd all jumped up and landed simultaneously, the resulting tremor could have brought down the Coliseum.

And yes, the principals were miked. In other words, this was not going to be a performance focused on the subtle nuances of interpersonal relationships and the evolution of character development.

But then, when has Turandot ever been about that?

At the top of the show, you'll recall, Timur is knocked down and Liu calls out for help, attracting the attention of Calaf, who rushes over for a joyful reunion. In this staging, our Prince was on the outisde edge of the stage-right stage, while Liu and Timur were on the outside edge of the OPPOSITE STAGE. The poor tenor had to sprint the length of all three full-sized platforms to make his way over to Papa while the crazed populace of Peking cleared a path for him.

"Excuse me. Coming through. Scusi, scusi".

There really should have been a shuttle bus to get him there, and don't ask me how he was able to sing after that.

And who was in the cast? I have a vague memory that the tenor was named Massimo, which suggests it could have been the noted tenor Massimo Giordano. Giordano would have been 28 at the time and had not yet appeared outside his native Italy, which makes it possible.

As for the rest of the cast, I have no clue. Those names have long since evaporated from memory. Not surprising, since I no longer remember what I had for lunch yesteday. Don't get old, kids.

So it was big, loud, and over-the-top to the max. The conductor was stationed so far from the stage that, in order to cue the singers, he had to leap in the air. In this case, athleticism was at least as important as baton technique. He must have been exhausted afterwards.

By the time the opera had ended, the city bus lines had shut down for the night, leaving us to snag a taxi. It was around one in the morning, so that took a little doing. Now for most of us, our knowledge of Italian was limited to A) the roles we'd sung, and B) knowing how to order meals in a restaurant. Fortunately, my dear friend Heidi Schmidt was with us. Heidi had lived in Tuscany for a year, studying on a fellowship. She chatted amiably with the cab driver and his son, who was in the front seat for some reason if memory serves.

I know what some of you, the purists among my Faithful Readers, are thinking right now. I know my description of this Turandot has you recoiling in disgust. "That's not ART!" And you're right - Art it was Not.

Listen, I have standards too, okay? And I admit that I'll get way more satisfaction from next season's company premiere of Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream at Virginia Opera than I did from that bloated, amplified, vulgar exhibition.

But I wouldn't have missed it for anything. Call it a guilty pleasure - it was FUN.