Wagner fanboy Stephen Fry steps on the stage of Bayreuth.
WAGNER & ME (Patrick McGrady). 89 minutes. Some subtitles. Opens Friday (September 21) at the Bloor Hot Docs Cinema. See times. Rating: NNN Rating: NNN
Can you love an artist's work while detesting his life and morals? Writer/actor Stephen Fry has spent decades struggling with composer Richard Wagner, whose music he cherishes but whose anti-Semitism he loathes.
In Patrick McGrady's workmanlike doc, Fry makes a pilgrimage to the Bayreuth Festival, where he recounts its fabled history, sits in on rehearsals and even talks to Wagner's great-granddaughter Eva Wagner-Pasquier on the eve of her first season as the fest's general manager, in 2009.
The film gets more serious when investigating the composer's notorious essay about "Jewishness in music" and exploring the full extent of Bayreuth's association with the Nazis. In one of the most powerful scenes, Fry, a Jew who lost family in the Holocaust, visits Nuremberg and refuses to mount the podium from which Hitler delivered his infamous speeches.
Some recent developments at the festival - a production of Parsifal set during WWII, for instance - are refreshing. And there's a powerful scene featuring Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, whose cello skills saved her life at Auschwitz. For a moment she becomes interviewer and forces Fry to question his conscience.