Cheva­lier

The sci­en­tist Stephen Jay Gould once wrote, ​“I am, some­how, less inter­est­ed in the weight and con­vo­lu­tions of Einstein’s brain than in the near cer­tain­ty that peo­ple of equal tal­ent have lived and died in cot­ton fields and sweat­shops.” Stephen Williams’ biopic of Joseph Bologne, the son of an enslaved black woman and a white plan­ta­tion own­er, presents his tal­ent akin to Mozart, who so impressed Marie Antoinette she knight­ed him Cheva­lier de Saint Georges.

His sto­ry is trag­ic on two lev­els; first, with regard to the gild­ed cage that Bologne was trapped in and the delib­er­ate steps to under­mine his tal­ents and erase his lega­cy; but sec­ond­ly, in con­sid­er­ing that all the music and art that we will nev­er get to see or hear as bril­liant minds toil and expire due to the sys­temic injus­tice of this hell-hole we call plan­et Earth.

Hav­ing said that, Cheva­lier is also pret­ty fun. The cos­tum­ing is gor­geous. The cam­era work pos­sess­es a dynam­ic musi­cal­i­ty fit­ting of its sub­ject. Sup­port­ing turns from Lucy Boyn­ton as a sparky Antoinette and Min­nie Dri­ver and Sian Clif­ford as an opera diva and patron of Bologne’s art are all a hoot. Kelvin Har­ri­son Jr, best known for play­ing the sweet dum dum Chris­t­ian in 2021’s Cyra­no, excels at the oth­er side of the coin, bring­ing a true sense of fero­cious genius to his per­for­mance and whips up deli­cious chem­istry with Sama­ra Weaving’s Marie Josephine, an aris­to­crat mar­ried to a pow­er­ful Marquis.

It starts with a ​‘vio­lin off’ between Mozart and Bologne, inspired by the rock’n’roll leg­end that Eric Clap­ton once allowed an audi­ence mem­ber to join him on stage. Lit­tle did he realise that per­son was Jimi Hen­drix, and he blew Clapton’s con­sid­er­able gui­tar skills of the water. And Mozart, like Clap­ton, sup­pos­ed­ly did that too, and here reacts with a shocked, ​“Who the fuck is that?!”

But while Hen­drix would go on to achieve leg­endary sta­tus for his genius, Cheva­lier has us watch Bologne’s ambi­tions thwart­ed at every turn as he is nev­er entire­ly accept­ed by French soci­ety, and unable to mar­ry. Much of his music has since been lost, and three years after Bologne’s death, Napoleon rein­stat­ed slav­ery, so his work was effec­tive­ly banned.

The French Rev­o­lu­tion is a com­plex event, peo­ple ris­ing up to take on the great wealth divides that exist­ed at the time, and every­one from Sofia Cop­po­la to Abel Gance to the upcom­ing Rid­ley Scott Napoleon film can pore through the ash­es to find a strik­ing angle to put on screen. Yet Chevalier’s per­spec­tive feels refresh­ing­ly dis­tinct when it comes to what was lost and gained.

Williams, who is best known for his work in tele­vi­sion, includ­ing Watch­men and Lost, and writer Ste­fani Robin­son who sim­i­lar­ly found suc­cess in TV with What We Do in the Shad­ows and Atlanta, do occa­sion­al­ly defer to some staid biopic con­ven­tions. Still, they bring a tru­ly cin­e­mat­ic sense of scale that befits a lega­cy and a life so grand, and music so won­der­ous. Cheva­lier is ulti­mate­ly a dev­as­tat­ing reminder of a great­ness that was near­ly entire­ly expunged from his­to­ry, and how equal tal­ents lived and died with­out even being giv­en a chance to put a lit­tle more beau­ty into the world.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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