I Love It When You Call Me "Big Gesualdo"
Posted by Chris S.
Another documentary hit out of the ballpark by Herr Herzog!! Gesualdo, despite having numerous highly fictionalized sequences, uses these embellishments to accentuate an already eccentric life, a man who was a prince, a composer, who killed his wife and her lover in flagrante, and who hired servants to torture him for the last several years of his life in contrition. He also, during this time, made madrigal music so unconventional and startling, it sounds like it would HAVE to have been composed in A.S. (After Stravinsky), but dates back to the early 1600s! Already looking the dude up on Amazon...
These are just the facts! Herzog adds stories of how he killed his second child (who he suspected was the love child of his wife and her lover) by having his servants put the child in a swing and swing him for TWO AND A HALF DAYS STRAIGHT, while a choir around him sings a song about not fearing death (inspiration for "Don't Fear the Reaper"?). He tells of a strange disc kept in the Gesualdo castle museum, which Gesualdo purportedly paid a lot of money for the greatest minds in the land to translate. All bullshit...none of this happened. But when you hear the other stories, the facts and lies become naturall intertwined. You don't get the feeling that this is real, and that is embellishment. The historical societies that perform his work do so with great talent and aplomb, and his music is dissected from many angles.
The final scene, a man working as a footman in an Italian renaissance fair/jousting competition, takes a cell phone call from his mother. He says, and Herzog translates, "Don't worry mom, I'll be home soon...the documentary about Gesualdo is almost done anyway." Then he looks right into the camera for a long time, with a baffling expression, a mix of laughter and seriousness. Turns out Herzog told him to look serious, but was making faces next to the camera. Oh, and his mother didn't call him...that was Herzog's brother/producer Lucki Stipetic. There you go.
Another documentary hit out of the ballpark by Herr Herzog!! Gesualdo, despite having numerous highly fictionalized sequences, uses these embellishments to accentuate an already eccentric life, a man who was a prince, a composer, who killed his wife and her lover in flagrante, and who hired servants to torture him for the last several years of his life in contrition. He also, during this time, made madrigal music so unconventional and startling, it sounds like it would HAVE to have been composed in A.S. (After Stravinsky), but dates back to the early 1600s! Already looking the dude up on Amazon...
These are just the facts! Herzog adds stories of how he killed his second child (who he suspected was the love child of his wife and her lover) by having his servants put the child in a swing and swing him for TWO AND A HALF DAYS STRAIGHT, while a choir around him sings a song about not fearing death (inspiration for "Don't Fear the Reaper"?). He tells of a strange disc kept in the Gesualdo castle museum, which Gesualdo purportedly paid a lot of money for the greatest minds in the land to translate. All bullshit...none of this happened. But when you hear the other stories, the facts and lies become naturall intertwined. You don't get the feeling that this is real, and that is embellishment. The historical societies that perform his work do so with great talent and aplomb, and his music is dissected from many angles.
The final scene, a man working as a footman in an Italian renaissance fair/jousting competition, takes a cell phone call from his mother. He says, and Herzog translates, "Don't worry mom, I'll be home soon...the documentary about Gesualdo is almost done anyway." Then he looks right into the camera for a long time, with a baffling expression, a mix of laughter and seriousness. Turns out Herzog told him to look serious, but was making faces next to the camera. Oh, and his mother didn't call him...that was Herzog's brother/producer Lucki Stipetic. There you go.
posted at 2:25 PM
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