Chevalier – Film Review
by Frank L.

Director – Stephen Williams
Writer – Stefani Robinson
Stars – Kelvin Harrison Jr., Samara Weaving, Lucy Boynton

The real Joseph Bologne was born in 1745 in Guadalupe, which was then a French colony. He was the illegitimate child of a wealthy married planter and an enslaved woman of African descent. The film begins with Bologne (Kelvin Harrison Jr.), a gifted violinist, going head-to-head with none other than Mozart. This shows the amazing talent Bologne had as a violinist.

Bologne was brought by his father to France at a young age, where he went to a smart school but given his heritage, he was an outsider. His father instilled in him the need to excel and as a man of music and as a fencer he did just that. His mixed race would be a handicap in French society, notwithstanding that he had initially the support of none other than Marie Antoinette, the Queen of France (Lucy Boynton). She conferred on him the Chevalier de Saint- George.  Bologne had no doubt about his ability and thought he should be the conductor of the Paris Opera. Members of the royal court did not fancy Bologne in such a position because of the colour of his skin and his lack of breeding. As a result in the intervening years, he has been written out of history. He has been conveniently forgotten.

In the film, Bologne (Harrison Jr) is so self-assured and self-confident, it is possible to imagine briefly that his skin colour will not undo him. But as the members of the Court are all from a narrow white cohort and magnificently dressed in gorgeous satins with elaborate wigs, his skin colour appears increasingly anomalous. His mother Nanon (Ronke Adekoluejo), newly freed as a slave, reminds him of his origins and marks his cards on the snakes that surround him in this privileged existence in which he was brought up. He has an affair with a married woman Marie-Josephine (Samara Weaving) whose husband Marquis de Montalembert (Marton Csokas) is a philistine with a nasty sadistic streak. It does not bode well.

The Director of this film, Stephen Williams, is a regular for HBO who directed episodes of Watchmen and Westworld. He has a list of TV credits as long as your arm, including 26 episodes of Lost. This is his first move into mainstream Film.

The writer Stefani Robinson places all this jostling within the court against the far greater drama beginning to stir outside in the streets of Paris which will ultimately lead to the French Revolution. These stirrings play quite a prominent role in the latter part of the film and to a certain extent deflect from the main story being told which is that of Bologne. On the other hand, his story makes a mockery of the battle cry of the revolution of “liberty, equality and fraternity”.

This is a fine costume drama which restores to public consciousness the life of Joseph Bologne whose achievements as a composer, conductor and violinist have been forgotten because of the colour of his skin. More importantly, it is a targeted attack against racism which this film makes clear has a long and corrosive history.