Thoughts on Madame Sousatzka

 

via Giphy/Courtesy NBCUniversal/Cinema Odeplex Films

*Madame Sousatzka (Shirley MacLaine) appears at the top of a stairway to face Sushila (Shabana Amzi), mother of her piano student Manek (Navin Chowdhry).*
"Well, I hope nothing has happened."
"No, she just came to bring me my shampoo."
"Well, how thoughtful, but 1 o'clock in the morning?"
"Well, if he doesn't use this very special shampoo I buy for him, his hair gets into a very terrible tangle."
"Well, if there's no crisis, perhaps we can all get back to sleep. Manek, you have a hard day tomorrow. You need all the rest you can get. Good night, madame. Uh, the door closes by itself. There's no need to slam it. People are sleeping."

Every so often, I think about dropping a line to one of my college professors. If there ever was Franko! the sitcom, the role would inevitably be stunt-cast with Candice Bergen, although she actually reminded me of Dana Ivey. Anyway, among her classes was journalism and the law, what I liked to call "How not to get sued." I came out of that class feeling like I had a second spine. Over the next few years, we got along well. I was proud that I didn't change majors, just as I'm proud that I made journalism my career. In all this time, though, I've never had the guts to send any articles to my professors. Especially her. It's been 10 years since graduation and I'm still nervous about my grade. So, yeah, I had no trouble getting into Madame Sousatzka.

Directed by John Schlesinger, the movie was adapted from Bernice Rubens' novel by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala and Schlesinger. I could describe Sousatzka simply -- prodigy hones his craft; it becomes a matter of mother vs. mentor; the older lady accomplishes so much for a young man, but seemingly not enough for herself -- but even with those ideas alongside each other, it's inadequate. This is a sensitive work, dramatizing intimacies that are all the more moving because they're unsustainable. It's not a shock that Manek will move on from Sousatzka, one of three tenants of Lady Emily (Peggy Ashcroft). The others are failed pop singer Jenny (Twiggy) and gay chiropractor Cordle (Geoffrey Bayldon). Both also fall, in a sense, for Manek.

I'll never stop marveling at my instincts. I hadn't expected that Sousatzka would be the perfect movie to see at this point in The Women of 1988, just before Running on Empty. I won't have too many opportunities to appraise young men's performances, so I'm glad that the first substantial one is indeed substantial. Chowdhry is a delight at Manek, a piano genius (forgive me, Madame S., but I do use the word) caught between the two inevitable extremes. Is he playing for Sushila or for Sousatzka? For love or money? To use one of my favorite lyrics, "The choice may have been mistaken, the choosing was not." I think the last time I quoted Sondheim in a Thoughts On post was for Dreamchild. He's so appropriate when writing about maturity.

"I never left you. You know that. Even now. Today when I'm playing in a concert, you're somehow with me. When things get tough, when the piano behaves like a monster, and the audience is another monster, well, then I hear you. Yelling at me, telling me to get on with it. And I listen. And I learn. I know that all those hours with you have formed a little core in strength with me and that gets me through it."

Azmi is a respectable third among Sousatzka's best performers. Sushila does not strike me as an easy role to play. She's not a stage mother or a philistine, but someone who sacrificed for her son and isn't unreasonably expecting him to make something out of his abilities. She'll never understand Manek the way that Sousatzka does, but then again, most supposed music lovers won't, either. I wish I could love Ashcroft's work better. She has chemistry opposite Bayldon, but I never quite believed that Lady Emily and Soutsatzka have been a part of each others' lives for decades. Twiggy is appealing as Jenny -- I smirked at her eagerly agreeing with Manek's suggestion that she's 20 years old -- but she only has a couple good scenes to play, not really an arc.

Which brings us to Madame MacLaine. In theory, she had the easiest role to play, one that would allow her to be mercurial, artistically pure, genuinely loving and cultured. It would be insufferable to watch if Shirley didn't approach the material with discipline. We know that in time, we're going to see beneath Sousatzka's surface, why she is against her students having concerts, how her equally-if-not-more-accomplished Maman (Carol Gillies), for better or for worse, made such an impact on her life and why she keeps teaching despite the endless heartache. Let it play, Sousatzka tells Manek, a direction that Shirley appears to have also taken.

"You know what they say about me? They say I made terrible scenes when you left me for Leo. That I went mad, like a jealous mistress. That I, that I was in love with you -- a 16-year-old boy. ... Well, of course I was in love with you. Isn't every mother in love with the son she creates?"

I normally end with a quote, but I have a little more to say. I've never read Rubens, so I don't know if Lady Emily's neighborhood being bought up by real estate agents was her invention or Prawer Jhabvala and Schlesinger's. It's not a bad plot element. There's a certain poignancy in seeing all of those for sale signs. I guess I was waiting for what I assumed was inevitable, Sousatzka vs. a realtor. If it happened, it happened after the credits. Just like the goings on of me and my professor after the class of 2011 got their diplomas.

Recommended.

Thoughts:
-- "All right then. Play. Play! Play for anyone. Play in the street for all I care. Don't let me stop you. There's no need at all to respect my wishes or my feelings. And go on, sit in Maman's chair!"
-- Box Office: This grossed $3.5 million on a $9 million budget. I'm not sure if it received a wide release.
-- Awards Watch: Shirley received a Golden Globe, tying with Jodie Foster and Sigourney Weaver. Gerald Gouriet's score was also Golden Globe-nominated, but lost to Maurice Jarre for Gorillas in the Mist. Ashcroft received a BAFTA nomination, but lost to Michelle Pfeiffer for Dangerous Liaisons.

-- Critic's Corner, the movie: "This is not a movie about success or failure; it is a movie about soldiering on, about continuing to do your best, day after day, simply because you believe in yourself -- no matter what anyone else thinks," Roger Ebert wrote. "A middlebrow celebration of the sanctity of art," according to Dave Kehr, Chicago Tribune.

-- Critic's Corner, Shirley: "In the most radical departure of her career, MacLaine reveals the very soul of this difficult woman and, in doing so, steals your heart," wrote Kevin Thomas, Los Angeles Times. "One of the best performances of the year," Ebert declared. Kehr: "Somehow it's the sheer obviousness of the performance that's most entertaining. ... MacLaine (relishes) in the exercise of her chosen profession." "It's an egotistical performance in an egotistical role, and it burns through the movie's tremulous sensitivity," David Denby wrote.

-- Hey, It's 1988!: To promote the movie, Shirley appeared on Late Night with David Letterman. Things didn't go so well. (Skip to 21:48 if you only have time for the interview.)

Courtesy Don Giler

-- On a happier note, Twiggy and Leigh Larson, unlike Jenny and Ronnie, have gone the distance as a couple. They married shortly before Madame Sousatzka was released.

-- "It will be charming to believe that you think of me sometimes, when I think of you quite often."

-- Next: Running on Empty. On deck: A Fish Called Wanda.