M  O  V  I  E  S   |   " E  V  I  T  A "

Directed by Alan Parker

What's "Evita" got to cry about?
Not Madonna's performance, but Andrew Lloyd Webber's music.

BY LAURA MILLER

there's a decent little movie trapped inside "Evita," struggling to make itself felt beneath Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice's operatic score. Watching it, I felt my hand twitch reflexively, reaching for a volume control that it will never find — at least not until "Evita" comes out on video and can be viewed at its best, with the sound turned all the way down. The movie looks great, the spectacle fittingly spectacular and its Argentinian flavor strong, smoky and convincing. It even attains one moment of pure lyricism, when couples of all ages, across the nation, mourn the death of Eva Perón in 1952 by dancing languid, weepy tangos in the streets and bars. And the performances are strong, all the more impressive since every line must be sung. As the poor, illegitimate country girl who finagled her way into public adulation as the stylish wife of President Juan Perón, Madonna acquits herself handsomely — conveying both steely will and vulnerability. But, oh, that music. Having survived the ordeal of Lloyd Webber's "The Phantom of the Opera," I feel confident in saying that he's responsible for the many failings of this movie. Lloyd Webber is everything loud, dumb and tiresome, and everything loud, dumb and tiresome in "Evita" is him. On Broadway, Webber's musicals offer the visual splendor of a third-rate opera company coupled with scores of such unrelenting bombast that the experience is like listening to "The Star Spangled Banner" for three solid hours. The film version of "Evita" manages to keep the volume at a more tolerable level by virtue of its cast — Madonna's thin, sweet voice tempers music that would have been bludgeoning if given to the typical Broadway belter. But Webber's grandstanding style seems directly at odds with the intimacy of film itself, and it's hard to see "Evita" connecting with audiences the way his stage plays do. As pandering commercial entertainment, the movie also suffers from the complexity of its subject matter. There's no distinct villain, and Evita's own scrappy heroism is perpetually undercut by the Antonio Banderas character, an Argentinian everyman called Che (a mythical revolutionary, not the historical Guevara). He's always popping up in the fore- and backgrounds of scenes, holding a broom or wiping bar glasses with an angry, knowing sneer on his face. (Banderas is permitted only this expression throughout the film.) Apparently, he's there to reassure us that the filmmakers are no credulous star-worshippers, dazzled by Evita's legendary elegance and many acts of charity. They intend to tackle the tough issues, not just spin a guttersnipe-makes-good romance. Che's chief complaint is that Evita "did nothing" to counter her husband's repressive policies despite her extravagant displays of populism. The press materials laughably describe Che as "Brechtian," but Brecht wrote sophisticated, sardonic propaganda, completely incompatible with the melodrama that "Evita" also reaches for, or the brash spirit people expect from film and stage musicals. So, in one movie, we have a "Look out world, here I come" number (when Evita arrives in Buenos Aires) and scenes where characters are made to sing lines like "Current political thought is your wife's an incredible asset." And then she dies. Che is left with no one to hector but Jonathan Pryce's passive, melancholy Perón, and what, precisely, the movie wants to say about Evita herself remains unformed. If, like me, you've heard the musical's signature song "Don't Cry for Me, Argentina" a zillion times and hoped that, at the very least, the film would clue you in to what promise it was that Evita kept (or, for that matter, why Argentina should be crying for her, since she first sings the song at her moment of triumph, before she gets sick), forget it. When the final credits roll, you'll still be in the dark. Share your thoughts on Evita in the Movie section of Table Talk.