Pavarotti Documentary Misses All The Right Notes
In the opening scene of Pavarotti, the new documentary by director Ron Howard, the popular tenor travels deep into the Amazon jungle in search of an old opera house where the great Enrico Caruso may have once sung.
The building is shuttered, but because he's Luciano Pavarotti the door is unlocked for him to belt out a few honeyed notes from the stage. His fabulous voice soars into the vast emptiness of the auditorium.
Little could the viewer know, only moments into the film, that this opening footage would represent something of a metaphor for the entire movie. The documentary sports plenty of short clips highlighting the tenor's unique, sunny sound, but that voice, ultimately, echoes within a void. Pavarotti feels like a missed chance to tell a good story.
The real Pavarotti was a man of many paradoxes, an artist blessed with an enormous gift which in turn saddled him with immense responsibilities he often found impossible to fulfill. Upholding the standards of a 400-year-old operatic tradition is stressful enough, but doing it when you have become one of the most recognizable people on the planet adds another dimension of stress. Not to mention the tsunami of money that came rolling in, especially after the of popularity
