Mark Reviews Movies: THE WHITE CROW

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Review by Mark Dujsik | May 2, 2019

David Hare's screenplay for The White Crow covers a significant section of ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev's life, from his birth in 1938 until his defection from the Soviet Union in 1961. The man would go on to live almost another 32 years after he requested political asylum at Le Bourget Airport in Paris, having a celebrated career as a dancer and then as a choreographer. If we're going by the movie version of the man, Nureyev spent the first 23 years of his life as a moody child and young man, prone to outbursts of entitled anger, with a chip on his shoulder.

It was inevitable, perhaps, that Nureyev would leave the USSR, if only because he felt as if he deserved better and more in his profession than whatever the government would allow him. Whatever the motives, the isolated story of the dancer's actual defection is involving and intense.

In terms of this dramatization of Nureyev's tale (based on Julie Kavanagh's book Rudolf Nureyev: The Life), the downside is that his decision, as well as the stifling ultimatums presented to him and the suspenseful process of getting him away from his Soviet handlers, serves as the climax of the movie. Once it happens, this story, which only deals with this portion of Nureyev's life, is finished.

As a story, director Ralph Fiennes' movie provides a logical and psychologically sound progression from restriction to the promise of freedom. As a character, though, this version of Rudolf, played by Oleg Ivenko (himself a professional dancer, making his acting debut), is static and rather unsympathetic. If the man ever learned to come to terms with his humble origins or to control his ego, which are the primary traits of him as a character here, we would never learn it from this movie.

Hare's screenplay moves back-and-forth through time with little rhyme or reason. The thrust of the plot involves Rudolf's trip to Paris as a member of the company of the Mariinsky Ballet out of then-Leningrad. He's annoyed to learn that he will not be performing on opening night, promising a group of French dancers that, when he dances, they will know it.

Talking with the locals and traveling unaccompanied have been forbidden by the Soviet government, but Rudolf wants to learn from his peers and the city. He also strikes up a friendship and, if he weren't so self-involved, what could be more with Clara Saint (Adèle Exarchopoulos), who comes from a wealthy family and is in mourning over the recent death of her boyfriend, who was the son of France's Minister of Culture (This seems quite convenient, given what unfolds, but even in reality, this connection seems to have been sheer coincidence).

Flashbacks accompany the main story, going from Rudolf birth on a train, as well as his upbringing within a poor family in a small town in Siberia, to his training as a dancer under the tutelage of Alexander Ivanovich Pushkin (Fiennes, who, as an actor, admirably speaks Russian here and, as a director, more admirably allows each character to speak his or her native tongue—except when the language barrier demands English). The flashbacks arrive and end jarringly, but more to the point, they reveal little that isn't obvious from the central storyline.

From the childhood scenes, we get a sense of the poverty and the need for some kind of self-reliance, since his mother is busy raising three other children and working to survive, while Rudolf's father is serving in the military. From the scenes of his dance education, we come to understand that, while his technique is often imperfect, Rudolf is destined for great things because of his dedication to self-improvement and his passion for the art. In terms of romances, there are perhaps Clara, definitely Alexander's wife Xenia (Chulpan Khamatova) while he's living with the couple and on the mend from a leg injury, and incidentally Teja (Louis Hoffman), a fellow dancer who films Rudolf's performances and teaches English to his star-in-the-making roommate.

Shared by all of these connections is Rudolf's inability to truly connect with them and his tendency to lash out at them whenever he's feeling insecure, unappreciated, or judged. He is, to put it bluntly, an egotistical and ungrateful jerk for the significant portion of the flashbacks of him as a young man and for the entirety of the main story.

There is no subject that he loves more than himself and his aspirations. Coming between his teacher and the man's wife, his only concern is feeling stifled by living in their cramped apartment. Confronted with Clara's sadness about her boyfriend's untimely death, Rudolf simply waits for an opportunity to change the subject to himself, commanding her to speak to, from his perspective, a judgmental waiter and then yelling at her when she won't.

Fiennes seems to recognize the main character's flaws (His own character has a confounded moment alone after one of Rudolf's outbursts, and the movie denies the dancer the sound of applause following his performances), but The White Crow never finds a way to elicit sympathy for him. Rudolf's defection should be a moment of triumph, but apart from Fiennes' staging of the sequence, it just leaves us cold.

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