Chevalier

Anyway, I saw Chevalier recently, and it was well worth the wait. I was surprised to see Samara Weaving in it, along with Minnie Driver. The supporting cast is excellent, and I'm glad that the movie included Joseph's mother Nanon in the story to help him connect with other French Blacks, not just white society and the royal court. The movie is a great antidote to period movies that continually whitewash history.

Apparently taking on the condescending "black Mozart" label, the film opens with a violin duel between the two, and Joseph Bologne dazzles the audience to the point of a standing ovation. Then we see how he grew up, with his rich white father enrolling him in a boarding school and assuring him that "no one can keep down an excellent Frenchman" despite his race and illegitimacy. So while enduring racism from his classmates, Joseph becomes a violin virtuoso as well as an accomplished fencer. When he wins a match in front of the King and Queen, he gets knighted, becoming Chevalier de Saint-George.

SPOILERS BELOW

The king becomes a nonentity, but Marie Antoinette continues to be a presence, going to operas with Joseph and joking about the tired music scene. Joseph wants to become head of the royal opera house, but other courtly people want the queen to appoint a white guy named Gluck, even though he's not French. Joseph suggests a contest to prove who's better qualified, and the queen agrees, so that a committee can make the decision instead of her being blamed for it. So Joseph has to write and stage an opera for the committee to judge, and that's where his love interest comes in.

Joseph meets Marie-Josephine at a musical afterparty where she sings, and later he wants her to star in his opera Ernestine. Unfortunately, she's married to a racist Marquis who also hates operas and threatens Joseph with a cannon. Joseph and his producer Madame de Genlis try to recast, but eventually Marie-Josephine decides to defy her husband, because she's a budding feminist. When discussing marriage, Joseph informs her that he can't get married himself because it's illegal for him to marry a white society woman, and if he wanted to marry a black woman, he would be stripped of his title. She sympathizes with him and also attends anti-monarchy meetings with Joseph's school friend Louis Phillipe. Remember, the French Revolution is coming up.

Meanwhile Joseph's father dies, and Joseph's mother Nanon is finally freed from slavery and comes to live with him. The reunion seems happy at first but there are tensions as Joseph doesn't want to discuss his traumas with her, and she thinks that he's too trusting of his white friends. She's proven right when Joseph wins the contest, but Marie Antoinette still won't appoint him to the job, due to a racist protest from opera singers refusing to take orders from a mulatto. Joseph can't believe his supposed friend the queen won't stand by him when he has defended her from critics. Defeated, Joseph gets drunk at another afterparty, confronting the queen, Gluck, and the vengeful opera singer who denigrates him as a parlor trick curiosity, a show monkey. Also then the Marquis attacks Joseph and tells him to stay away from his wife. Marie-Josephine reluctantly goes back to her husband, out of fear for Joseph's safety. 

Months later, we learn that Marie-Josephine is pregnant and she doesn't know who the father is, but she again refuses to run away with Joseph, because there's nowhere realistically they can go. Thankfully, Nanon is there to tell Joseph to stop wallowing in heartbreak and get out. He meets other Black immigrants and sees that France is indeed changing and that he's not really alone, even if the world is unfair. She helps him embrace his heritage and even braids his hair, eventually leading him to appear in public without his powdered white wig.

Joseph also starts to be more active in the cause of equality, offering to give a concert with proceeds to benefit the revolutionaries. The queen arrives to threaten him with arrest and thinks that Joseph is just getting personal revenge on her, but he tells her that it's much bigger than her. I really enjoyed seeing Joseph connect with the revolutionaries and take up the cause; he'll eventually lead an all-black regiment in the Revolution. The movie ends before the actual bloodshed and darkness of the French Revolution, though, and we don't see his death. But titles tell us that when Napoleon took over France, he banned all of Joseph's music, leading him to be forgotten. Victors write history, after all. I'm glad that Joseph's many accomplishments are being discovered again so we can appreciate his genius and excellence.