Review of Music Within

Feel-good biopic fails to reach beyond the level of facile sentimentality

by Zachary Wigon 

There’s something to be said for formulas. When formulas work, they work. This goes without saying in the realm of science. In the realm of art, the success or failure of a formula is given a bit more variability. One wants to follow the formula closely enough that its past success is repeated here, but not so closely that the film’s narrative arc becomes predictable. To toe this line is not easy, but the fact that it must be toed is something that any decent filmmaker should know. One has to question whether or not the director of Music Within, Steven Sawalich, even knows there is a balance to be struck. Music Within falls so deeply into the formula of an against-the-odds biopic that it never comes close to bringing itself out of the muck and mire. Music Within begins in the late 40s, as we get a rapid account of the first eleven years of our narrator’s (Richard Pimentel, played by Ron Livingston) life. His mother, it turns out, had seven miscarriages before she successfully gave birth to Richard – but by that point she had gone crazy. Richard’s father is killed in a freak accident at the general store he manages, and soon enough Richard is more than ready to get out of the house and become a public speaker, the one thing that truly interests him. As he gets older, he decides to try out for a scholarship in the public speaking program at Northwestern University. He is told that he has talent, but needs real life experience in order to be more convcing. This being the late 60s, Richard decides to enlist in the Army and head over to Vietnam. Life experience is what Richard gets. In Vietnam, an explosion renders him with major hearing loss, and he becomes deaf. Back in the U.S., he finds that – shocker! – being disabled leads to being discriminated against. Richard begins attending a university, where he befriends a young man named Art (Michael Sheen), who has Cerebral Palsy. The bedrock of their friendship is initially formed because Richard, who can still hear lower registers, is able to hear what Art says. What a pair the two make. Of course, the girl cannot be far away. Christine (Melissa George) goes to school with them, and a road trip to a concert upstate leads to an amorous liaison between Christine and Richard. Soon enough, with the support of Christine and Art, Richard finds a vocation in finding employment for disabled veterans, which grows into a service for finding employment for all types of disabled persons. Richard becomes a major political force in the country, as time goes on and the influence of the disabled community grows. There are some serious issues with the ways in which the disabilities of the characters are portrayed. Richard has to be the most communicative deaf person ever presented onscreen – he can read lips perfectly, and despite the loss of his hearing, he speaks without any impediment. It’s essentially as if he’s, well, not deaf at all. None of the hindrances that come with being deaf are really present in his character. The same is true, albeit to a lesser extent, of Art. While Sheen does a convincing job of portraying the physical mannerisms of someone with CP, his speech seems nevertheless far easier to understand than the speech of someone who actually has CP. It’s understandable that certain dramatic license must be provided in order to tell a story about characters with these conditions, but the fact remains that to strip them of their conditions in their representation is to strip them of their defining element. It’s a choice that truly renders the characters without much of what is supposed to define them. Of course, the response of the filmmaker would be that their disabilities are not what define these characters, and ideally that would be correct. Unfortunately, the sketches of these characters never get deep enough to engross the audience. Despite the fact that they are based on real people, the characters’ emotions are displayed without significant complexity. On a technical level, the film is unable to maintain a suspension of disbelief. Vietnam looks more like Maine with palm trees. An anti-war protest is stocked with all of – 12 extras. The period-era costumes look more like the attire at a 70s-themed costume party than anything actually realistic. And despite the fact that the film spans 30 years in the adult lives of these characters, they do not appear to age at all over the course of the film. The subject matter of the film could’ve provided for an intriguing story – as almost any biopic’s subject matter can – but the fact of the matter is that on such a low-budget scale, with a filmmaker who fails to grasp the complexity of his characters, what we are left with is a film that fails to be compelling in any sense. There is one segment that gets close to intriguing – the sequence where Richard is learning to read lips – but most of the film fails to provide this level of interest.

Posted on 01/29/08 by: FC Scribes 06:23 PM