Thursday, March 28, 2024

Movie Review: “Chevalier” proves that Kelvin Harrison Jr. is an absolute star


Director: Stephen Williams

Writer: Stefani Robinson

Stars: Kelvin Harrison Jr., Samara Weaving, Lucy Boynton, Marton Csokas

Synopsis: The illegitimate son of an African slave and a French plantation owner, Joseph Bologne rises to improbable heights in French society as a celebrated violinist-composer and fencer, complete with a love affair and falling out with Marie Antoinette.


It’s time to confirm what Kelvin Harrison Jr. has been telling us since bursting onto the scene in the stunning take on white guilt and black existentialism thriller Luce. Harrison can easily transition from leading man (Waves) to chameleon-like character actor (The Photograph). He’s a singular, generational talent whose performance in the new film Chevalier is magnetic. It’s an absolutely scintillating turn that doesn’t so much burn up the screen as Harrison sets it ablaze.

Kelvin Harrison Jr. plays Joseph Bologne, a once-celebrated composer, virtuoso violinist, and French revolutionary who rose through high society circles from relative obscurity. As a child, Bologne’s talent was undeniable. The unwanted son of a French plantation owner and an African slave, Bologne was a violin prodigy who fought for every inch of recognition because of the uncontrollable biological pigmentation of his skin was all people chose to see. As Bologne grows older, he brashly challenges any composer and violinist with a seat at the table, an exclusive club that refuses to let him in.

As word-of-mouth spreads of a Creole man of color with immense talent, Bologne begins to rub shoulders with stunning and infamous figures we know from the history books, the ones that have strangely left Joseph Bologne absent. Bologne beings to attend lavish dinner parties with lavish Marie Antoinette (Lucy Boynton) and La Guimard (Minnie Driver) and has a torrid affair with opera singer Marie-Josephine (Samara Weaving), causing trouble with her husband Marc René (Marton Csokas), who doesn’t take kindly to his wife’s dalliances. She becomes Bologne’s muse as he works to create a piece that will earn him the respect he deserves

The title Chevalier refers to Bologne’s Royal Order of the Legion of Honour in French status, with over 75,000 total, which translates to Knight. The Chevalier de Saint-Georges was an obscure historical figure whose accomplishments were wiped away when Napoleon reinstated slavery to help establish a foothold and develop his Louisiana Purchase. This is well-respected television director Stephen Williams’s (Lost) first feature film in over two decades. It’s a costume drama that is tightly paced, gorgeous to look at, and where characters are wound up and ready to wear their emotions on their sleeves at a moment’s notice.

Much of this is fictionalized, and great artistic license is taken here. However, Atlanta and What We Do in the Shadows’ scribe Stefani Robinson creates a tighter and well-contained story than other films with such liberties. Chevalier has your classic themes of identity and classism. However, Robinson also strategically layers and attaches themes of trauma, abandonment, and the feminization of dependence to those low-hanging, fruitful subject matters. However, I would have liked Boynton’s Maria-Antoinette not to be the same cliched character who didn’t care about people experiencing poverty (history proves this wasn’t necessarily the case) and to explore how abolishing slavery led to an increased amount of serfdom.

While the film’s story will ultimately be foreseeable, Chevalier rests on the shoulders of the immensely talented Harrison. The film needed an actor to pull off confidence, even north of arrogant, while merging real-life human emotions with the French tokenism of the time and the greatness he was continuously being dangled in front of his face. This is a provocative figure, and Harrison’s tantalizing turn, with a handful of anger-fueled indignation at clear turnabouts, is simply captivating. As is an emotionally charged scene towards the film’s end, where Bologne experiences a tragic and equally horrific loss.

Yes, Chevalier isn’t exactly revolutionary, pun intended, and is hampered by a movie of the week subplot between the titular character and Marie-Josephine (even if that does lead to the film’s most powerful moment). Still, the is a compulsively watchable and highly entertaining glimpse at the forgotten significance and a stunning lack of recognition carried by a stunning Harrison, who shares one undeniable quality with Joseph Bologne.

Greatness.

Grade: B

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