The life and times of Czech composer Josef Mysliveček make for salacious viewing as The Bohemian injects a sense of mischief into the traditional biopic.
Director: Petr Václav
Genre: Biopic, Drama, History
Run Time: 140′
US & Canada Release: July 30, 2024
UK Release: TBA
Where to watch: on digital & VOD
While undoubtedly overshadowed by his young acquaintance, one Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, the work of Josef Mysliveček is remembered as seminal to the late eighteenth-century classicism that would follow it. Alongside his creative legacy, his exploits as ‘Il Boemo’, a promiscuous, hedonistic Czech travelling through Late Baroque-era Italy, live on in Mozart family correspondence.
Playfully exaggerating its most scandalous, and perhaps entirely apocryphal, elements to convey the mood of the age, Petr Václav’s The Bohemian tells Mysliveček’s story with apposite vigour.
We start at the end, with Mysliveček dying at 43, disease-ridden and destitute. His hollowed-out nose and putrid skin, revealed once he removes a ghostly face mask, are excellently rendered and haunt the film from then on. Jumping decades back, we see Mysliveček’s (Vojtech Dyk) early years in Italy, first in Venice, then in Naples, Bologna and countless other great European cities where nobility and intelligentsia gather to hear his work.
As brazen a social climber as he is a womaniser, the musician swiftly finds glory in both the opera house and the bedroom. When he isn’t lost in a music-induced reverie, the young maestro is schmoozing with his powerful patrons or making love to his female students. But from the film’s prologue we know this lifestyle cannot last forever, and Il Boemo’s fall comes as suddenly as his rise.
Dyk’s turn as the composer is impressively multifaceted; he convinces as a man of great hubris, whose voracious appetite for music, sex and all other fine things in life is deftly counterbalanced by a more muted performance as ill-health (historians suspect syphilis) rears its head in later years. The women surrounding Mysliveček, and God knows there are plenty, are equally compelling. Most notable are Lana Vladi as his aristocratic lover and Barbara Ronchi’s fiery soprano Caterina Gabrielli – often referred to simply as ‘La Gabrielli’, such is her sense of presence. Both are dazzling when working in tandem with the film’s lead.
There is a painterly quality to how this all looks, not far removed from the effects achieved by Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon or the more recent Portrait of a Lady on Fire. The cast is costumed exquisitely and set to a convincing backdrop of Rococo excess. With the majority of the film’s scenes taking place in theatres, mansions and palaces, its interiors offer an integral verisimilitude, replete with the kind of lavish ornamentation that characterised the epoch and mirrors the hedonism at the heart of the narrative. Cinematographer Diego Romero composes his wide shots like the paintings of Caravaggio, rich with colour and contrast, while his intimate close-ups fizz with the energy of Mysliveček’s musical oeuvre.
But most costume dramas can do the glamour; what really makes this film work is its dedication to filth. Erotic though it is, Mysliveček’s private life is hardly ‘sexy’ as most would understand the term, but in a seedy, carnal sense. Similarly, his interactions with the great and good of European aristocracy are proudly lacking in glitzy allure; a particularly memorable scene involving King Ferdinand of Naples (Mirko Ciccariello), a chamber pot and a metaphor about excrement comes to mind.
Exciting all this transgression may be, the film does clock in at a bulky 140 minutes, and even Václav can’t last that long without devolving into some familiar biopic beats. By the time we reach the film’s final act, its series of repetitive affairs and reunions has begun to wear thin. The depiction of Mysliveček’s artistic career can also be plodding, which is strange considering how stirringly performed the music itself is.
Nonetheless, for the most part The Bohemian smartly balances the sublime and the ridiculous, the tragedy and farce that defined an epoch. It’s overlong and overwrought, yes, but doesn’t even that speak to the excesses of Mysliveček’s life, the vivacity of his music, and the dirty underbelly of a culture that would ultimately be his undoing? The film’s release may well seek to ride the current wave of historical sex and scandal on screen, but Bridgerton this ain’t. The Bohemian is a warts-and-all affair, majestic and grotesque in equal measure.
The Bohemian will be released on digital platforms and VOD on July 30, 2024.
Loud and Clear Reviews has an affiliate partnership with Apple, so we receive a share of the revenue from your purchase or streaming of the films when you click on the button on this page. This won’t affect how much you pay for them and helps us keep the site free for everyone.
