Hilary and Jackie
UK 1998
Reviewed by Nick Kimberley
Synopsis
Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.
Encouraged by their mother Iris, Hilary and Jacqueline du Pré develop precocious musical talents. Hilary is invited to play in a children's concert and insists Jackie join in. But when Jackie disrupts rehearsals, Iris angrily says she must learn to play as well as Hilary. Jackie is soon attracting more attention as a player than Hilary, and makes a prestigious concert debut.
Jackie's success undermines Hilary's confidence, but when Kiffer asks Hilary to play with his orchestra, she agrees. The two fall in love and marry. Jackie falls in love with pianist Daniel Barenboim, converts to Judaism and marries him, but is unhappy. While visiting Hilary, Jackie announces she wants to sleep with Kiffer. Daniel makes an unsuccessful attempt to rescue their marriage. After he leaves, Hilary encourages Kiffer to sleep with Jackie, although it does little for anyone's peace of mind.
Flashbacks now show events from Jackie's point of view. She meets Daniel, and they begin playing together. Signs of Jackie's multiple sclerosis emerge until finally, after a performance conducted by Daniel, she can't stand up to acknowledge the applause. She spends time in hospital, where the dancer Margot Fonteyn offers Jackie her flat to recuperate in. Daniel, now artistic director with the Orchestre de Paris, visits London less and less frequently. Confined to a wheelchair, Jackie plays tambourine at a children's concert. Hilary and Jackie are close again, but driving back from visiting Jackie with their brother Piers, Hilary hears the radio announcement of Jackie's death at the age of 42.
Review
The cellist Jacqueline du Pré was one of the most talented musicians Britain has produced in the last 50 years. Talented enough that for some European and American writers she alone gave the lie to the myth that Britain was "a land without music". And it's certainly true that, in 60s Britain, she seemed to embody a passion and a joie de vivre not always apparent in the world of classical music. Her success was instant and meteoric; the illness that killed her brought her playing career to an end when she was only 27.
A Genius in the Family, on which Frank Cottrell Boyce (Butterfly Kiss, Welcome to Sarajevo) based his screenplay for Hilary and Jackie, is an often painfully underwritten book in which Hilary and her brother Piers take turns to tell the story of growing up in sister Jackie's shadow. The film acknowledges that Hilary's is the more gripping story by all but writing Piers out of the plot. In this, he is no more than an agreeably grinning buffoon, semi-detached from the emotions which seethe beneath the prim demeanours of the women around him. Similarly, the du Prés' father retreats into the background, although in the book his illness, barely mentioned in the movie, provides an anguished counterpoint to Jackie's multiple sclerosis. His stroke serves only to occasion Jackie's angry accusation that he's trying to upstage her.
These are all acceptable, even welcome changes. Any movie that attempted to replicate the emotionless monotone of the du Prés' prose would be dull indeed, and by narrowing the focus to the relationship between the two sisters, Hilary and Jackie undoubtedly locates the heart of the matter. In the process it gives us a kind of Amadeus for English suburbia, with Hilary playing Salieri to the extravagantly gifted but tortured Mozart of Jacqueline du Pré. Yet where the Salieri of Amadeus (not the historical figure) was an embittered inferior trying to grasp the nature of Mozart's genius, Hilary is a decent soul repeatedly put upon by Jackie's spoiled behaviour. Music doesn't have much in the way of healing power here, and Jackie's genius only makes her and everyone else unhappy. Of course there's a long history of movies depicting the gifted who are brattish and unhappy - in fact these seem to be the very qualities by which cinema defines genius.
But if the film predictably fails to get a grip on what 'genius' might be, it first does a decent job of making sense of the hard work without which talent means little. It then illustrates the slow and disturbing progress of an illness that is particularly insidious in its attack on mind and body. Of course, it attacks genius and non-genius alike, but there is something inevitably poignant about the fact that Jacqueline du Pré was so young when she succumbed to the disease: had she not done so, she might now be at the height of her powers as a musician. It's these 'might-have-beens' that give Hilary and Jackie its dramatic power.
Sensibly, the movie chooses not to get involved in the controversy over whether or not Daniel Barenboim neglected du Pré during her illness - or rather, it suggests that he did, but without dwelling on the matter. If its decision to include only the briefest fragment of du Pré's playing seems an odd one (nearly all of the music was specially recorded), that at least steers it away from the fetishisation that has marked the cellist's posthumous career. Although music is at the heart of the film, it is not a film about music, but about an English middle-class family in suppressed emotional turmoil. If that limits its scope, its impact is increased by some finely measured performances. This is an actors' film, and the actors are actually rather good. That may not make it a fashionable movie, but it's not a negligible achievement.
Credits
- Producers
- Andy Paterson
- Nicolas Kent
- Screenplay
- Frank Cottrell Boyce
- Based on the book A Genius in the Family by
- Hilary du Pré
- Piers du Pré
- Director of Photography
- David Johnson
- Editor
- Martin Walsh
- Production Designer
- Alice Normington
- Music/Music Conductor
- Barrington Pheloung
- ©Intermedia Film Equities Limited and Film Four Ltd
- Production Companies
- Film Four and Intermedia Films present with the participation of British Screen and the Arts Council of England an Oxford Film Company production
- Supported by the National Lottery through the Arts Council of England
- Developed with the support of the European Script Fund
- Developed in association with the BBC
- Executive Producers
- Guy East
- Nigel Sinclair
- Ruth Jackson
- Intermedia Films
- Will Evans
- Kathy Goodman
- Tim Haslam
- Paul Davis
- Production Supervisor
- Guy Tannahill
- Production Co-ordinator
- Patsy de Lord
- Location Manager
- David Pinnington
- London Contact
- Stephanie Collins
- Post-production Co-ordinator
- Tamara Syer
- Assistant Directors
- Rupert Ryle-Hodges
- Guy Heeley
- Phil Booth
- Geoff Dibben
- Jason Byrne
- Script Supervisor
- Diana Dill
- Casting
- Simone Ireland
- Vanessa Pereira
- ADR Voice:
- Louis Elman
- Script Consultant
- Nick Drake
- Camera Operator
- Nick Schlesinger
- Steadicam Operator
- Howard J. Smith
- Digital Matte Paintings
- Andrew Garnett-Lawson
- Special Visual Effects
- Mill Film Ltd (London)
- Visual Effects Supervisor:
- Karl Mooney
- Visual Effects Associate Producer:
- Jeanette Volturno
- Visual Effects Editor:
- John Seymour
- Compositors:
- John Hardwick
- Andrea Sholer
- Mike Connolly
- Special Effects
- Supervisor:
- Evan Green-Hughes
- Technician:
- Steve Breheny
- Graphic Designer
- Kevin Walker
- Art Director
- Charmian Adams
- Set Decorator
- Tricia Edwards
- Costume Designer
- Sandy Powell
- Wardrobe Supervisor
- John Scott
- Make-up
- ChiefArtist:
- Lois Burwell
- Artist:
- Pauline Heys
- Chief Hairdresser
- Lisa Tomblin
- Titles/Opticals
- General Screen Enterprises
- Musicians
- Piano:
- Sally Heath
- Cello Soloist:
- Caroline Dale
- Flute:
- David Heath
- Orchestras
- London Metropolitan Orchestra
- leader:
- Jonathan Rees
- The Philharmonia
- conductor:
- Steve Mercurio
- leader:
- Jonathan Carney
- Music Supervisor
- Barrington Pheloung
- Music Co-ordinator
- Anthony Fabian
- Music Editor
- Bob Hathaway
- Recordist/Mixers
- Joel Iwataki
- Mike Ross-Trevor
- Music Research/Preparation
- Matthew Slater
- Soundtrack
- "Concerto for Violoncello and Orchestra in E Minor Opus 85" by Edward Elgar, conducted by Daniel Barenboim, cello: Jacqueline du Pré, Philadelphia Orchestra; "You Really Got Me" by Raymond D. Davies; "Tango" by/performed by Ian Jones
- Extracts from
- "Toy Symphony", "Trio for Piano, Violin and Violoncello in D Major", "Concerto for Violoncello in D Major", "Concerto for Violoncello in C Major" by Joseph Haydn; "Prelude" & "Gigue" from "Suite No. 1 in G Major", "B Minor Suite for Flute, Strings and Continuo", "Gavotte" from "Suite No. 6 in D Major", "Prelude" from "Suite No.3 in C Major" by Johann Sebastian Bach; "Sonata for Violoncello in F Major" by Johannes Brahms; "Sonata for Violoncello and Piano in A Major" by César Franck; "Concerto for Violoncello in G Minor" by Matthias Georg Monn; "Sonata for Violoncello in G Minor" by George Frideric Handel; "Concerto for Violoncello in E Minor" by Edward Elgar; "First Fantasy Piece for Violoncello and Piano Opus 73" by Robert Schumann; "Trio in B Flat Major 'Archduke'" by Ludwig van Beethoven; "Concerto for Violoncello in B Minor" by Antonín Dvorák
- Sound Design
- Nigel Heath
- Julian Slater
- Production Sound Mixer
- David Crozier
- Re-recording Mixers
- Ray Merrin
- Graham Daniel
- Dialogue Editor
- James Feltham
- ADR
- Mixer:
- Kevin Taylor
- Foley
- Artists:
- Lionel Selwyn
- Stan Fiferman
- Pam Finch
- Mixer:
- Kevin Taylor
- Coaches
- Cello:
- Robert Bailey
- Caroline Dale
- Conducting:
- Steven Higgins
- Piano:
- Ian Jones
- Flute:
- Neil McLaren
- Movement:
- Sue Lefton
- Flute Teacher
- Carol Little
- Cast
- Emily Watson
- Jacqueline 'Jackie' du Pré
- Rachel Griffiths
- Hilary du Pré
- James Frain
- Daniel 'Danny' Barenboim
- David Morrissey
- Kiffer Finzi
- Charles Dance
- Derek du Pré
- Celia Imrie
- Iris du Pré
- Rupert Penry Jones
- Piers du Pré
- Bill Paterson
- cello teacher
- Auriol Evans
- young Jackie
- Keeley Flanders
- young Hilary
- Grace Chatto
- Teresa
- Nyree Dawn Porter
- Dame Margot Fonteyn
- Maggie McCarthy
- Margaret
- Vernon Dobtcheff
- Professor Bentley
- Anthony Smee
- BBC nabob
- Delia Lindsay
- tweedy woman
- Linda Spurrier
- twinset
Nick Haverson- photographer
- Kika Mirylees
- patron
- Pal Banda
- maestro
- Robert Rietti
- Italian flunky
- Tamsin Pike
- harpsicord player
- David Shimwell
- man in suit
- Peter Czajkowski
- German admirer
- Stella Maris
- Spanish admirer
- Carla Medonca
- Spanish maid
- Anna Barkan
- acolyte
- Steven Atholl
- bookish man
- Heather Weeks
- guest
- Ralph De Souza
- violinist
- Andrea Chaialton
- dressmaker
- Jon Rumney
- rabbi
- Kate Hetherington
- middle Jackie
- Ariana Daykin
- middle Hilary
- Oliver Lee
- baby Piers
- Hayley James-Gannon
- Melissa James-Gannon
- Hilary's children
- George Kennaway
- German concert conductor
- John Gough
- Wigmore accompanist
- Brian Perkins
- radio announcer
- members of the freelance orchestral section of The British Musicians' Union
- The English Northern Philharmonia
- Hallé Philharmonic Orchestra
- Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra
- Jan Kaznowski and children from The Bedfordshire Chamber Music Course
- Stephen Threlfall and pupils of Chetham's School of Music
- on-stage orchestras
- Certificate
- 15
- Distributor
- Film Four Distributors
- 10,994 feet
- 122 minutes 10 seconds
- Dolby digital
- In Colour
- Anamorphic [Panavision]