On E List of Movie Reviews
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Evita (1996)
Rate:
2
Viewed:
8/03, 6/25
6/25:
Watching Madonna sing for over two hours is completely insane.
That's what happened in Evita despite the misleading cover. All everybody had to do was talk, and
things would be fine. But noooo...there must be singing by everybody in everywhere at all times. At least,
the cinematography is very good, earning Darius Khondji an Oscar nomination. If not for that, there will be
no positives left although Antonio Banderas is fine and did do the singing himself. But Che Guevara? The guy
was a mass murderer.
As for Madonna, I think she was right for the part, bringing a few things to the table: her ability to sing,
her status as a moneymaker, and her likeness to the real Eva Perón. Obviously, she sings too much to my dismay.
I wondered if she would've done a good job had all of her lines been converted to spoken. However, I found much
of the lyrics nonsensical in terms of painting Eva Perón, a person whom I've never heard in my entire life.
In reality, Eva Duarte, a totally uneducated, longtime prostitute who slept her way to the top, was married
to Colonel Juan Perón, who became the president of Argentina in 1946 before being overthrown in 1955 due to
the ruination of national economy and runaway inflation, and her name was changed to Eva Perón who's
affectionally called Evita. Remember this is the country that some Nazi war criminals such as Josef Mengele
and Adolf Eichmann escaped to. For the most part, Eva Perón was an ardent tool of the fascist government and
a shopping addict who preferred to spend lavishly on jewelry, furs, shoes, handbags, hats, and Dior dresses. And
yes...you are correct: she was the Imelda Marco of her day and probably used the charity foundation as her personal
banking account. According to an article written by Antonella Marty:
"Vowing to 'violently repress' his opponents, Colonel Perón nationalized entire industries, established
state-owned enterprises, and imposed Marxist 'import substitution' policies that allowed his government to
control all trade in and out of Argentina. To create a government monopoly, Colonel Perón's rule by fiat
needed to squash dissent. And, so, the Peronist government restricted freedom of press, censored media
criticism, and jailed political opponents who dared to disagree. Colonel Perón removed dissenters from
their positions in the government, courts, and schools. And he couldn't have squashed dissent without his
wife. Evita was in charge of controlling the press, arbitrarily intervening in the government press
office for the sake of censorship."
Eva Perón wasn't even a feminist, having once said, "We women do not need to think, the General does it
for us. We will be implacable and fanatical. We will ask neither capacity nor intelligence. No one here is
the owner of the truth, none but Perón, and before supporting a candidate—whatever his hierarchy may
be—we will demand a blank check of loyalty to Perón, which we will fill with his extermination when he
is not man enough to fulfill it. We are already trained and indoctrinated to teach and instill in the child that
the soul of the fatherland, before the schools, is formed by Argentine mothers in the cradle, that we teach them
to love Perón before blessing proper names."
All in all, Evita is an extremely dull musical that makes it impossible to sit through from start to
finish without taking several breaks.