Nate At The Movies

When the Oscar nominations came out last week, I was shocked to not see either original song from Wicked: For Good on there. I was even more shocked to see a song that I had never heard of from a film I had never heard of. I paid a pretty penny—1,500 of them, to be exact—to sit through Viva Verdi! today, and though I’m an admirer of Verdi (we sang tons of his work in college), I had a hard time getting through this one.

There wasn’t a part of Viva Verdi! that I didn’t agree with, and the people involved all led interesting lives, I bet. My problems were two: 1) the structure of the documentary was incredibly repetitive and eventually boring, and 2) the song that got this entire film an Oscar nomination was hardly in the film! The documentary seemed content with endless 5-minute vignettes about each of Casa Verdi’s residents, but with so much overlap in the lives of these residents (hint: they’re all musicians), it got boring fast. I also wished that “Sweet Dreams of Joy” was performed in the film, rather than being used interstitially for maybe 45 seconds in the middle. Is this really what we’re accepting as a Best Original Song nominee these days? How silly.

I appreciated the spotlight that Viva Verdi! put on Casa Verdi, its residents, and the revitalizing power of music, but there had to be more engaging ways of showing all of this. The documentary settled for their redundant style and boring visual language—reminiscent of those history docs we had to watch in high school—over really diving in to the contributions of Verdi and of music as a whole. The transformative power of music, especially in the elderly, has been long known, and I know Viva Verdi! knew that; it just didn’t know how to tell the viewer.

While I love Verdi and I love music (obviously), Viva Verdi! was 78 minutes of my life that I could’ve spent anywhere else, and $15 that didn’t seem to deliver the same return on investment as my similarly-priced Avatar: Fire and Ash ticket in IMAX. Maybe playing some music of my own at home would have been a better use of time. Also, I’m so done with how Best Original Song is decided. Next year, let’s change the rules so only songs that are actually used in the narrative get nominated. I don’t need only musicals, but the songs in the credits have frustrated me too much. I’ll get off of my soapbox now, but suffice it to say I was disappointed in Viva Verdi! for multiple reasons.