Evita – (1996) Based on Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s Broadway musical with Madonna as Eva Peron. The film opens with an announcement in a movie theater of Eva Peron’s death in Buenos Aires, 1952. Everyone in Argentina appears to be weeping and wailing over the death. Next a flashback, twenty-six years earlier in Chivilcoy when Eva’s impoverished mother and her bastard siblings are barred from entering the church where her respectable, middle-class father’s funeral is taking place. Forward to Eva’s funeral, Madonna’s voice sings: “so share my glory/ so share my coffin.” The cynical chorus of one, Ché (Antonio Banderas) sings: “she did nothing for years … she’s not coming back to you.” In Junin an impecunious but ambitious 15-year-old Eva sleeps with Augustín Magaldi (Jimmy Nail), a popular singer, who after she implores him takes her to Buenos Aires with him where he has a wife and family. On her own she struggles doing whatever is necessary to survive. After men have taken advantage of her circumstances, she learns to turn the tricks on them, becoming a photograph model in magazines, a personality on radio, an actress.

A musical montage chronicles her rise to fame and fortune – I’m not appreciative of otherwise realistic scenes where characters break into song – meeting Colonel Juan Peron in 1944 in San Juan during a relief campaign after an earthquake, rallying the masses and the unions, raising the popular consciousness after Peron is arrested and imprisoned (“he loves you, if not how could he love me”), waiting for him upon his release, marrying him, and becoming first lady of Argentine when he gets elected president. A saint with star quality, she charms Europe with her golden touch on her rainbow tour. She promises the peasants to take from the oligarchs and give the riches to them. But Ché mocks her by asking, “Do you now represent anyone’s cause but your own?” Her defense: I am but one woman against an establishment of privilege, power, and tradition. She died of cancer in her early 30s. We watched this at the time of a musical celebration of what would have been Princess Diana’s 46^th birthday, nearly ten years after her death. She was Great Britain’s Evita.

Click here for links to places to buy or rent this movie in video and/or DVD format, or to buy the soundtrack, posters, books, even used videos, games, electronics and lots of other stuff. I suggest you shop at least two of these places before buying anything. Prices seem to vary continuously. For more information on this film, click on this link to The Internet Movie Database. Type in the name of the movie in the search box and press enter. You will be able to find background information on the film, the actors, and links to much more information.

Copyright © 2007 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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