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"Evita" allows the audience to identify with a heroine who achieves greatness by well, golly, by being who she is. It celebrates the life of a woman who begins as a quasi-prostitute, marries a powerful man, locks him out of her bedroom, and inspires the idolatry of the masses by spending enormous sums on herself. When she sings: "They need to adore me, so Christian Dior me," she's right on the money.

I begin on this note not to criticize the new musical Evita (which I enjoyed very much), but to bring a touch of reality to the character of Eva Peron, who, essentially, was famous because she was so very well-known. Her fame continued after her death, as her skillfully embalmed body went on to a long-running career of its own, displayed before multitudes, spirited to Europe, fought over, prayed over, and finally sealed beneath slabs of steel in an Argentine cemetery. Eva Peron lived only until 33, but she went out with a long curtain call.

She was not an obvious subject for a musical. Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, who wrote the stage version of Evita and whose songs are wall-to-wall in the movie, must have known that; why else did they provide a key character named Che Guevera (onstage) and Che (on screen), to ask embarrassing questions? "You let down your people, Evita," he sings. She let down the poor, shirtless ones by providing a glamorous facade for a fascist dictatorship, by salting away charity funds, and by distracting from her husband's tacit protection of Nazi war criminals.

Why, then, were Webber and Rice so right in choosing Eva Peron as their heroine? My guess is that they perfectly anticipated Evita's core audience, affluent, middle-aged and female. The musical celebrates Eva Peron's narcissism, her furs and diamonds, her firm management of her man. Given such enticements, what audience is going to quibble about ideology?

For years I have wondered, during "Don't Cry for Me Argentina", why we were not to cry. Now I understand: We need not cry because (a) Evita got everything out of life she dreamed of, and (b) Argentina should cry for itself. Even poor Juan Peron should shed a tear or two; he is relegated in the movie to the status of a "walker", a presentable man who adorns the arm of a rich and powerful woman as a human fashion accessory.

All of these thoughts, as I watched Alan Parker's "Evita", did not in the least prevent me from having a good time. I suspect Parker has as many questions about his heroine as I do, and I am sure that Che (Antonio Banderas) and Juan Peron (Jonathan Pryce) do, not to mention Oliver Stone, co-author of the screenplay. Only Evita herself, magnificently embodied by Madonna, rises above the quibbles, as she should; if there is one thing a great Evita should lack, it is any trace of self-doubt. Here we have a celebration of a legendary woman (for those who take the film superficially) and a moral tale of a misspent life (for those who see more clearly).

Certainly Parker is a good director for this material. He has made more musicals than his contemporaries, not only "Bugsy Malone", "Fame" and "The Commitments", but especially "Pink Floyd the Wall", one of the great modern musicals, where he uses similar images of marching automatons. Working with exteriors in Argentina and Hungary and richly detailed interior sets, he stages Evita's life as a soap opera version of "Triumph of the Will", with goose-stepping troops beating out the cadence of her rise to glory.

The movie is almost entirely music; the fugitive lines of spoken dialogue sound sheepish. Madonna, who took voice lessons to extend her range, easily masters the musical material. As importantly, she is convincing as Evita, from the painful early scene where, as an unacknowledged child, she tries to force entry into her father's funeral, to later scenes where the poor rural girl converts herself into a nightclub singer, radio star, desirable mistress, and political leader.

There is a certain opaque quality in Madonna's Evita; what you see is not exactly what you get. The Che character zeroes in on this, questioning her motives, doubting her ideals, pointing out contradictions and evasions. Yet for Evita there are no inconsistencies, because everything she does is at the service of her image. It is only if you believe she is at the service of the poor that you begin to wonder. Listen closely as she sings:

"For I am ordinary, unimportant,
And undeserving
Of such attention
Unless we all are
I think we all are
So share my glory".

The poor, in other words, deserve what Evita has, so her program consists of her having it and the poor being happy for her. After all, if she didn't have it, she'd be poor, too. In other words: The lottery is wonderful, just as long as I win it.

Banderas, as Che, sees through this; his performance is one of the triumphs of the movie. He sings well, he has a commanding screen presence, and he finds a middle ground between condemnation and giving the devil her due. He is "of the people" enough to feel their passion for Evita, and enough of a revolutionary to distrust his feelings.

Pryce, as the dictator, remains more difficult to read. He is grateful for the success Evita brings him (her broadcasts free him from prison, her campaigns win his elections, her fame legitimatizes his regime). But there is a quiet little scene where he knocks on her locked bedroom door and then shuffles back to his own room, and that scene speaks volumes for the haunted look in his eyes.

The music, like most of the Webber/Rice scores, is repetitive to the point of brainwashing. It's as if they come up with one good song and go directly into rehearsals. The reason their songs become hits is that you've heard them a dozen times by the end of the show. But Parker's visuals enliven the music, and Madonna and Banderas bring it passion. By the end of the film we feel like we've had our money's worth, and we're sure Evita has.

Review by Roger Ebert - Chicago Times



Evita is a grand production worthy of Oscar consideration.
I've never seen a movie quite like Evita before. I've seen some musicals, but they usually aren't as elaborate and grand as this one is. Evita is more or less an opera-type movie where most of the dialogue is sung instead of spoken. Does this make it better than if it had been spoken out? Probably, because the music provides a mood to every scene, and it makes you feel happy when you're supposed to feel happy, and sad when you're supposed to feel sad. Never have I cried as much during a movie as I did during Evita.

I talked to a friend who works at a movie theater showing Evita, and he said that they have never had so many walk-outs during a movie. If I ever met someone that walked out of that movie, I would want to know why they left, particularly because the final thirty minutes of the movie are the most heart wrenching and beautiful moments in the movie. The songs are beautifully written and performed, and Madonna has proven herself a wonderful actress. Finally, she has gotten a role that seemed made for her. And though I don't think she will win the Oscar for Best Actress, her performance should get nominated.

Evita is about the life of Eva Perón, the First Lady of Argentina. Her father died when she was really young and she wasn't allowed to see her father because she was a bastard child. When she became a teenager, she decided to go to Buenos Aires to become an actress. She pretty much slept her way to the top, dumping guys and meeting other men in order to benefit her career. She rises through to stardom, and because she has the right friends, she meets Juan Perón. He runs for President of Argentina and wins because his campaign is to help the middle and lower classes. Eva (Madonna) gains a lot of power because of this, and works to benefit the unfortunate classes, mainly because she started out in a middle class and she hated it.

The movie jumps back and forth from past to present for the first fifteen minutes, but once you get past that, the movie really gets good. I'm not saying it isn't good for the first few minutes of the movie, but it's hard to follow. The movie is actually pretty hard to follow anyway, because the entire movie is sung and sometimes it's hard to understand what they are saying. But that's not important -- what is important is the feeling and emotion that is put out by the music. My favorite song is "You Must Love Me" which was specially written for this movie (Evita was based on a musical). The lyrics by Tim Rice and music by Andrew Lloyd Webber are the real star of the movie. Madonna, who needed voice lessons in order to reach the range required for the music, is perfect for the role. For me, Madonna has never sounded better than in Evita.

One big surprise of the movie is Antonio Banderas as Chč. I was shocked at how well he sung and held his own with Madonna. All the actors work well together, even Jonathan Pryce as Juan Perón, who usually is a comedic actor. Even he had a good voice. The director Alan Parker must have had a lot of Tylenol for this movie, because a tremendous amount of work went into this movie. He had to work with 600 crew members and over 40,000 extras. To get them all to sing the same lyrics and do everything right must have put a ton of pressure on Parker. But he did it and produced a terrific movie with Oscar nominations written all over it. And it has to have the award for Best Original Song for "You Must Love Me".

Evita is rated PG. There is only some mild violence and some mild language, but other than that it's okay for everyone. I'm not sure kids under 15 would like it, but they might like the music. For Madonna, this movie proves a mark in her history that shows that she can act, and she doesn't have to be show off her body to get attention. Madonna has gotten a lot of attention and respect from me, someone who usually doesn't like Madonna because of her lifestyle. For some reason, while watching Evita, I kept seeing the similarities between Eva Perón's life and Madonna's. She even said herself that she was the best actress to play the part. And she was right. - Four stars out of four.

Review by Boyd Petrie - NewsAndEntertainment.com



Musical tale of legendary Eva Peron is even better on screen

Forget Phantom of the Opera and Sunset Boulevard, the most complex and original work in Andrew Lloyd Webber's quarter-century of musical theater has always been Evita.

And now this audacious work based on the life of Eva Peron has finally received the sumptuous, artful and entertaining screen treatment it has long deserved. Alan Parker's Evita is among the best films of the year.

Though some moviegoers may be initially disoriented by the idea of a sing-all-the-way-through musical (there is no spoken dialogue), they will soon be caught up in this fascinating, fast-moving saga about an illegitimate peasant and small-time radio actress who became the most powerful woman in Argentine history. If you've been on Planet Earth for the last year, you know that Madonna has the title role, and thanks to her reportedly passionate commitment and intense voice training, the 38-year-old pop superstar finally moves from the dance club turntables and concert stage to movie stardom.

She's as perfect for the screen interpretation of Eva Peron as the Tony-winning Patti LuPone was for the different demands of the stage version. Though Madonna's voice is still relatively thin, it is ideal for the intimate, up-close parameters of film. More importantly, she has developed a stronger upper range and impressively confronts the wide-ranging musical score by Webber and lyricist Tim Rice.

Madonna's acting occurs within the context of performing the songs, but is as expressive and engrossing as you could want. And she's exquisitely costumed and coiffured, both as the poor, small-town performer and later as the ultra-stylish political figure of the 1940s, with a taste for Christian Dior.

When co-star Antonio Banderas sings of Eva as "high-flying, adored," Madonna makes it understandable. But the character's intense, even ruthless ambition also is clear -- both in Madonna's performance and in the film's clever narrative structure.

As in the play, the story of Evita is largely told by a skeptical, disbelieving character named Che, a device that brings balance and prevents the work from sugar-coating Eva Peron's controversial life.

On the stage, the narrator was specifically the khaki-clad revolutionary, Che Guevara. On film, Banderas plays an everyman named Che, sometimes depicted as a waiter, a bartender, a reporter, any acceptable excuse to put him on the scene. And the device works wonderfully and more sensibly than the Guevara conceit.

Banderas also is an ideal choice, a handsome, charismatic character who brings an authentic Spanish-flavored aura to the film, as well as a surprisingly effective, rock-oriented voice to the music.

Juan Peron, the military officer whom Eva accompanies (and apparently prods) to the top of the Argentine political heap, is portrayed by Jonathan Pryce, the only lead performer with musical theater experience (as the Tony-winning star of Miss Saigon). Also an accomplished actor, Pryce brings clarity and poignancy to his relatively few moments in the spotlight.

In an age of very few musical films, director Alan Parker has more experience than anyone, having previously created Bugsy Malone, Fame, Pink Floyd the Wall, and The Commitments. All those films -- as well as his political films Midnight Express and Mississippi Burning can be seen as training for and preamble to this master work. He clearly understands and underscores both the human and political dimensions of this story of ambition, power and dictatorship, while enriching the original Webber-Rice musical invention.

In Argentine, Hungarian and English locations, Parker and his talented crew have created an incredible parade of lavish setups, from polo matches on upper-class lawns to union rallies in the streets of Buenos Aires. Shot by cinematographer Darius Khondji in brown and red tones with golden highlights, some setups fill the screen for only a matter of seconds but stay in the memory long after the film has ended.

The film moves with relentless power, like a comet, exploding across the sky. The cameras and the editor's scissors must have been in constant motion; in that sense, Evita is the most spectacular musical video ever created.

But to label Evita as an elaborate MTV spinoff is grossly unfair. This is a breathtaking and complex night at the movies. I wouldn't change a frame, a performance or a note.

Review by Jack Garner - Democrat and Chronicle Rochester



Evita more powerful than ever
Both the musical and Madonna are transformed onscreen

"Evita" is so much more powerful on film than it was onstage and, before that, on records, that it makes those earlier incarnations seem mere developmental stages. As a '70s rock opera, it seemed underdeveloped. Although it had a richly evocative score by Andrew Lloyd Webber, Tim Rice's book and lyrics couldn't get past a certain ambivalence. "Evita" went through the motions of being repelled by Eva Peron's merger between glamour and politics, but clearly it was more fascinated by her mass appeal than skeptical of her celebrity. Although it may have thought it was skewering that celebrity, it was celebrating it.

What the stage musical lacked, in fact, was precisely the kind of baroque fleshing out that Alan Parker gives it onscreen in souped-up music video terms and lush noir visuals. Sung through, his Evita takes intractable material and turns it into a big, dark, kaleidoscopic juggernaut of high-impact imagery and panache that replicates the phenomenon of the Argentine dictator's wife. To a political world of stupefying dullness, she brought dazzle and style, selling herself - and her husband - with a shrewd instinct for image-mongering, cementing her mass appeal with a genuine populist passion. No stranger to class hatred (like the show's British creators), the poor girl from the pampas saw that the people got a little something instead of being picked clean, as usual. In throwing herself at the role with a nonstop single-mindedness, Madonna does more than just merge with the icon of Evita. More than casually familiar with reinvention herself, she goes back to the Hollywood movie star models they both admired, learned from, identified with. It's no secret that Madonna was really rolling the dice here, trying for the big-screen credibility that has so far eluded her. And she brings it off triumphantly, not so much overwhelming us as winning us with the nakedness of her ambition, with which she animates that of Eva Duarte from the sticks. Her way with the music will surprise her fans. There's much more finish to her singing here, more softness, more of an effort to reach into the music than she has shown before. In short, there's more vulnerability than brass, more introspection than we've ever heard from Madonna. The new song she got Lloyd Webber and Rice to write for her, You Must Love Me, is a cry for validation, the cry of an actress addicted to the adoration of the multitudes. Amazingly, she makes Evita's signature song, Don't Cry for Me, Argentina, tingle with freshness as she croons it to the teary masses on the balcony of the actual Casa Rosada, where the actual Eva stood.

She's persuasively militant, too, at the head of the marching workers ramrodding Juan Peron into power as she leads them in the rousing anthem, A New Argentina. She's kicky, irresistibly filled with girlish high spirits when she attaches herself to Jimmy Nail's funny milquetoast of a tango singer and pressures him into taking her from the sticks to the Big Apple. Her cheap suitcase swings in a playful little arc as she marches off to the train station, singing, Hello, Buenos Aires. Later, having spent several years working and sleeping her way up the ladder, she leads Peron back to her apartment, pretending to be fighting for self-control as she insinuatingly sings I'd Be So Good for You. It's an amusingly cynical song of negotiation posing as a prelude to passion. Answered by glances of knowing complicity from Jonathan Pryce's Peron, she makes it a suave chant of Brechtian understanding between two shrewd operators. And while her points of identification with the ambitious and hard-driving Evita are many, she impresses as an actress in an un-Madonna-like gesture of sweet submission, laying her head on father figure Peron's chest and rolling her eyes upward, as if hoping for a nod of approval before turning him over to the crowd she has worked into a frenzy. And this is the place to say that Parker knows how to use crowd reaction closeups.

Her waltz with the disillusioned Everyman and voice of the people, Che, played with wonderful crackle and snarl by Antonio Banderas, solves a problem built into that character. The problem faced by anyone trying to stage - or film - Evita is that it is essentially undramatic. It's a series of terrific songs offered as a series of snazzy-looking but dramatically static tableaux. Characters declare themselves, but there's none of the stuff of drama - confrontation - until the wonderful double-edged waltz scene between Evita and Che. It begins against a background of shanties of the poor, ends in a luxurious ballroom, dark and deserted. And in it we see in Che the disappointment of a disillusioned lover. As a representative of the people whose hopes were betrayed, he's finally provided with a raison d'etre, seeming more than just a boring scold.

Pryce, too, works miracles with Peron, turning what onstage had been a crude caricature into a crafty operator, shrewdly weighing every exchange, telling us with his eyes that there's more going on inside him than he ever lets on. Similarly, Parker uses location shooting - plus lots of rain and lots of night - to provide what no stage version could, namely the feel of a culture heavy with death. The ornate ceremoniousness of Eva's state funeral - and even her death - are artfully foreshadowed. It's no accident that the public announcement of Evita's death from cancer at 33 in 1952 is made to an audience in a movie house, watching a leaden costume romance. Clearly (and ironically) part of the reason they're weeping is that she brought them into contact with a much more exciting performance. But Evita is more than the Madonna show. Some of its simmer arises from the historical antagonism between Argentines and the show's British creators. Remember the Falklands? That chapter in British naval history was fed by Peron's expulsion of the Brits from Argentina. You'll enjoy Evita more if you check at the door any Madonna baggage you might be toting and just go with what you see onscreen. What you'll see is that Madonna's gutsy Eva Peron-like go-for-broke career move has paid off big. Madonna, Banderas, Pryce and Parker grandly bring Evita to a life I wasn't quite sure it had until now. It's Hollywood remembering - after years of amnesia - not only how to transfer a Broadway musical to the big screen but how to raise the ante in doing so.

Review by Jay Carr, Boston Globe January 1, 1997


"Evita" attempts to revive two things long thought dead: Madonna's acting career and the movie musical. For Madonna, it's close but no cigar. The hard-working diva brings star quality but little dramatic focus to the working-class Eva Peron, a model and actress of limited talent and boundless ambition whose well-orchestrated bed hopping landed her in the presidential palace as the wife of Argentine dictator Juan Peron (Jonathan Pryce). Eva died of cancer at 33, in 1952, cheered as a saint by the masses and jeered as a whore by the snobs. Let's just say that Madonna, a singer and actress of limited talent and boundless ambition whose well-orchestrated sexual antics landed her in the palace of pop icons, can relate. The knives are out against Eva in a song ready-made for Madonna haters: "Things have reached a pretty pass/When someone pretty lower class/Graceless and vulgar, uninspired/Can be accepted and admired."

Madonna is stunningly shot by Darius Khondji on locations in Argentina, Hungary and England, but she strikes more poses than she does sparks. Blame director Alan Parker for favoring spectacle over intimacy. Evita the movie is an aural and visual assault that leaves you glassy-eyed after 15 minutes, with two hours to go. It's not that audiences have no patience for a rock opera that is sung through with no dialogue. Evita was a hit as a concept album, in 1976, and onstage two years later. The movie is such a chore because watching actors strain to wrap their mouths around prerecorded songs for 134 minutes is irritating and, worse, alienating. It also robs Andrew Lloyd Webber's music (his most potent) and Tim Rice's lyrics (his least trite) of the charge of live performance. The perils of prerecording are nothing new. Norman Jewison couldn't pull it off with the film of Webber and Rice's Jesus Christ Superstar, in 1973; Ken Russell failed with the Who's Tommy, in 1975; and Parker himself struck out with Pink Floyd - The Wall, in 1982. Onscreen, with the score slowed down to help match lips to lyrics, Evita is a $60 million karaoke session trying to pass as a movie.

Madonna, to her credit, puts on quite a show. She sings. She tangos. She wears 85 gorgeous Penny Rose costumes. She changes wigs and men. She battles with Che (Antonio Banderas), the rebel narrator who hounds Eva like Hard Copy to expose her sins as a venal, fame-hungry media manipulator. She even belts out "Don't Cry for Me Argentina" to prove she's just folks.

What Madonna does not do, what Parker does not trust her to do, is act. She tries on an emotion, then discards it, leaving Eva's inner life opaque. Missing is the connecting tissue that marks a true characterization, such as the one that another rock diva, Courtney Love, delivers in The People vs. Larry Flynt. Love plays for real; Madonna plays for effect. It's the difference between acting and showing off.

Madonna's co-stars are left to fill in the emotional gaps. Banderas, fiercely compelling and in fine voice, exposes the myth of Santa Evita. "How can you claim you're our savior," he sings, "when those who oppose you/Are stepped on or cut up or simply disappear?" And the brilliant Pryce, in the film's best performance, almost humanizes Eva in the scene where he tells his wife she is dying of cancer. Madonna gets the defiant spirit that drives Eva, but she misses the grieving heart.

It's not for lack of trying. Besides the flashbacks showing Eva as the bastard child who is denied access to her father's funeral, Madonna is given a sympathy-begging new song, "You Must Love Me." That's pushing it. Not until Eva's deathbed scene, which Parker had the sense to record live, does Madonna break through the technology and the hard-sell posturing to connect directly with Eva and the audience. It's a daring moment in a movie that should have dared more. Eva's gaudy funeral ends the film as crowds line up to view the body that was "supposed to have been immortal." Line up for Evita in the hope of seeing the musical revived for a new generation and you'll find the same thing: a beautiful, embalmed corpse.

Review by Peter Travers - Rolling Stone #752