“I would like to see Hamilton with all the men’s parts cast as women and all the women, singing about who they love, cast as men”, she said. At a recent press event, Streep shared her newly acquired knowledge about how to live every day (and own every stage) a bit more like Florence would. Who knows what she heard (in her head)?
Advertisement
Meryl Streep has showcased her musical talents in several films, but her abilities take a purposeful turn for the worse in Florence Foster Jenkins. Streep is just hilarious, as is the film, but what really makes it work is it is also heartfelt and real. But that becomes a challenge when Jenkins decides to perform at a Carnegie Hall recital to raise the spirits of the troops. At the same time she’s dying of syphilis and St. Clair wants her to fulfill her dream of singing professionally, so he enables her and makes sure everyone around them does the same. As for working with three-time Academy Award victor and living legend Meryl Streep, Helberg points to one of his favorite scenes in the film where McMoon and Jenkins play a duet on the piano. “We set ourselves up to fail really badly, big time”, she continued. The great pleasure of her life was putting on elaborate concerts and tableaux, performing for her friends, who helped sustain the fiction that she was talented, despite her warped, off-key, singing. It’s a film that dares you to give it a bad review, simply so it can turn around and call you a bully who picks on the people who try.
A true eccentric, Jenkins lavished money on musical organizations and made recordings that brought her unique approach to operatic arias to the public.
Thanks to Nicholas Martin’s screenplay and Frears’ storytelling, Florence Foster Jenkins involves plenty of charm on the surface with a complex character study slowly unfolding just beneath. “I thought maybe he was gay, but didn’t know”, Helberg said.
You can see Streep on the big screen this Friday, when her latest film, Florence Foster Jenkins, opens in theaters. “And I think it’s amusing and it’s tragic and it’s comforting but only when it’s done passionately, only when somebody is putting themselves out there genuinely and ironically, and you know, aiming for the fences and kind of falling flat, no pun intended”. But I had never played classical or opera.
Advertisement
There was one thing I think I had learned wrong and he drew it to my attention and I said, “Oh god, I’m so sorry!” and he said, “No, no, keep it!” Even when she’s murdering a high C, his Florence finds the melody. I’m like hunkered down, and I hit right on the top of it, and there was the ball always sitting there. He heard on each take the little tiniest nuances of meaning, which I was playing around with, and I was nervous to be doing that, because you don’t improvise with Stephen Sondheim’s music.
