Movie Reaction: Chevalier

Formula: A Knight's Tale + Amadeus / Shaft

There's a subgenre that's popped up a lot lately. I call it a "Wikipedia movie". The idea is that there's an event or person you can stumble upon as a Wikipedia article (or something similar) and think "wow that's really interesting." I tend to use "Wikipedia movie" as a pejorative, because when a movie works, I don't think about it. Where it's most often applied is when I do the test of whether I would've gotten just as much out of reading the Wikipedia article as watching the movie.

I imagine you can guess what I'm about to say.

Chevalier is a Wikipedia Movie. It's based on the true story of a black man, Joseph Bologne, who worked his way to the height of 18th century French society. He was a true Renaissance man who excelled at everything from composition to fencing. In a just world, we'd maybe remember him the way we remember Benjamin Franklin or Leonardo da Vinci. Alas, in large part due to his race and status at birth, he was wiped from much of history. I get how one could hear about him and assume there's a movie in there. I still think there is one. I just don't think Chevalier does it very successfully.

The movie follows a familiar rise and fall story. Bologne (Kelvin Harrison Jr.) is born of a slave mother and wealthy white man (her owner). While his father wants nothing to do with him, he does recognize his skill at the violin and sends him off to a French boarding school. There, he becomes the best at virtually everything he tries which earns him the favor of Queen Marie Antoinette (Lucy Boynton). He's a striver who inevitably hits the ceiling of where society will allow him to go. Between a failed attempt to become lead of the Paris Opera and an affair with a wealthy white woman (Samara Weaving), he watches all his status disappear. Eventually, he learns to embrace his black heritage and fight with the people in the French Revolution.

Where the movie loses me is that it can’t decide how anachronistic it wants to be. It's not A Knight's Tale, which fully pretends these are modern characters in a non-modern world. It's not The Patriot which is only trying to be an action movie with occasional nods to what actually happened*. Chevalier relies on me to pretend I'm in Bridgerton when things are going well and 12 Years a Slave when they are going badly. It's a rough tonal shift and it really took me out of the movie.

*My go to example in The Patriot is when we find out all the black people working on Mel Gibson's land in South Carolina are free and choose to work for him. That's a preposterous explanation. That character would absolutely be a slave owner, but because The Patriot ultimately isn't a movie that's concerned about being accurate, it says what it needs to to keep the audience on the protagonist’s side.

The movie was always watchable because Kelvin Harrison Jr., Samara Weaving, Lucy Boynton, and the rest of the cast were good. I especially liked Minnie Driver showing up, fresh of the set of Phantom of the Opera. And it has some good 18th century costume and production design.

The general consensus of the movie has been pretty positive, which surprised me. I do kind of get the feeling that a lot of that is owed to people being interested to learn that there was this historical person more so than they were interested in the actual movie. Again, a hallmark of a "Wikipedia Movie". Or maybe I'm just trying to rationalize why I'm in the minority on this.

Verdict: Weakly Don't Recommend