Director:Â Ralph Fiennes
Cast: Oleg Ivenko, Ralph Fiennes, Louis Hofmann, Adèle Exarchopoulos, Sergei Polunin, Olivier Rabourdin
Rating: 12A
Running time:Â 127mins
Release date: 22/03/2019
Inspired by Julie Kavanagh’s NUREYEV: THE LIFE, Ralph Fiennes‘ latest directorial effort THE WHITE CROW focuses on the life of the late ballet legend, whose defection from the Soviet Union to the West in 1961 caused a sensation at the time.
Fiennes, who also co-produces the film from a screenplay by playwright David Hare, frames the story in three ways, focusing on his childhood years, his training in Russia and his ever-increasing visits to the West as Principal of the Kirov Ballet.
Nureyev is portrayed as a truly talented but difficult individual who makes no apologies for wanting a different tutor from the one he is lumbered with. Enter Ballet Master Alexander Ivanovich Pushkin (Fiennes) who becomes Nureyev’s mentor and guides him to greater heights – and a romantic liaison with his wife Xenia (Chulpan Nailevna Khamatova) who begins to take more than a passing interest in his studies and development.
During a tour of Paris, Nureyev (the excellent Oleg Ivenko) meets and falls in love with Clara Saint (Adèle Exarchopoulos) and also aims to try and break the ice between the French and Russian Ballet communities, who are segregated by their cultures and perceptions – and it is this very conflicting ideal that begins to impact on Nureyev’s own desire to be free…
THE WHITE CROW is a handsomely mounted production and portrayal of a man who was lost to the world through AIDS. Fiennes also refreshingly keeps the dialogue and performances at the best of times in their native French and Russian dialects, a subversion of what a lot of common biopics about international legends tend to be.
Shot in Croatia, Paris, Moscow and Russia to cover the key moments in Nureyev’s life, there is also sufficient moments of ballet which create an essence of what Nureyev as a dancer was all about. The climax of the film is reminiscent of Taylor Hackford’s WHITE NIGHTS (1986), which featured one of Nureyev’s contemporaries, Mikhail Baryshnikov starring opposite the late Gregory Hines and the Oscar-winning Lionel Richie song SAY YOU, SAY ME.
The to-and-fro style of the narrative, which frames Nureyev’s childhood in matted Cinemascope black and white (the film is shot in 1.85:1 Widescreen), may throw some people, but it is deliberate and intentional – and works wonders for a highly engaging analysis of a true outsider’s life (the ‘White Crow’ of the title, a definition which appears during the opening frames of the film.)
