bearealman

What follows are more reflections on the film than a review.

As I began watching, the question arose: Huh, why isn't Faye Dunaway acting anymore? Or have I just missed noticing her?

The film provides several probable answers without specifying an answer to my question (or explicitly raising it), which I won't spoil.

There is honesty throughout, without indulging in "hard-hitting" expose style journalism. As feature-length documentaries do, it touches on a great deal with moments of some insight, but not deep examination.

I appreciate getting to know better a personality I only understood through viewing their work (mostly as a much younger, less educated man) or through the sensationalizing lens of celebrity media "reporting" in the 70s.

The documentary seemed to me to raise a new unanswered question: What show might we yet see Ms Dunaway in?

And (this is not a film spoiler, just a projection of thoughts I brought as a viewer near the end of the film) the last half dozen views we have of Ms Dunaway made me think of a resemblance she has to Joni Mitchell. Might a quality Joni Mitchell biopic script be making the rounds? Maybe one that focuses on Joni's years after her major Pop success years, or that enables Dunaway to share the role with someone playing Joni's younger years?

It's just an idea I want to put out there.

Other than the (watered down) performances by Carl Perkins, Fats Domino, Jerry Lee Lewis and, this Rock and Roll fan willingly has to admit, the musical highlights of 2 songs by The Count Basie Orchestra, one with Joe Williams (with an aside of credit for capturing many popular radio DJs of the time, for the documentary value of it) the most of a "Whoa!"-reaction you'll have from watching Jamboree will be from the abstract sets that are backdrops to some of the lesser performers in this music industry promoting excuse for a film.

It opens with dancers in front of a giant abstraction of a phonograph record player. The crisp grays, blacks and whites, the solidly inaccurate relative sizes of the parts of the machine, the crane-like tone arm poised to drop down on the - Wait! Where's the record? That pill box hat shaped thing can't be the record, could it?

It's unexpectedly eye-catching in a way that I am guessing would have seemed almost merely utilitarian at the time. Maybe the credit goes to "Art Director ...Paul Barnes"?

Later, a white boy no-hit wonder, who wishes that he could rip off Chuck Berry's style just by slinging an oversized electric guitar, gets upstaged by a stage set of a couple tenement buildings, draped in mangled fire escapes.

An allegedly Spanish-flavored male vocal gets set by what reads as a tissue-paper representation of Mission-style arches and entranceways.

Disappointingly, Fats Domino just gets a few stacked dominoes.

With the exception of the Basie tunes, we get lesser records by even the better rockers, so I can't recommend approaching Jamboree with anything like the amount of anticipation I had at first.

But I sincerely would hope that The Smithsonian or The Motion Picture Academy or someone would put up the funds to archive the film for its documentary values, and to better synchronize the songs -and sometimes the spoken parts- to the performances. Besides the clunkily faked instrument-playing performances, and almost every lip-sync needing more rehearsal, it seems that whoever laid in the start of many of the recorded songs over what the musicians filmed didn't bother to start the music when the musicians began to "play". I'd even wish for some subtle re-editing if it could do justice to removing some of the awkward disconnections between lips or fingers moving and music allegedly happening in that moment.

Other reviewers have already made key points about the series's high quality of acting, writing and cinematography. And many reviewers are impressed by the messaging or meaning of this work: it focuses on how difficult and risky defying fascism and totalitarianism is. It leads one to experience how essential it is that we do so NOW, even if what small differences one makes seem insignificant. The series shows that one can hope for better outcomes than what actually happens, but even if those expectations aren't met, retaining, recording and disseminating, publishing and publicizing memories of historical facts is a strong weapon against future fascist totalitarian crimes and abuses.

My only criticism worth mentioning is that the actors portraying these characters are more beautiful or more attractive by conventional standards than the historical persons were. I found myself reminding myself as I watched the series that I mustn't conflate the physical beauty or good health displayed with the beauty, value and worth of a person no matter their appearance. Just one example: I have admired the actor Liev Schreiber for decades, but he appears in the final episodes only looking somewhat older, as if he had not been through the extreme ordeal his character went through. While I don't expect or demand actors go to extremes to physically portray physical harm such as deprivation, I believe the series' creators relied on faith in their audience's intelligence and best judgement to compensate for the unrealistic consistent good looks of the cast. The end credits' inclusion of photos of the actual people portrayed confirms that these are fine actors telling a necessary story, but are not doppelgängers for the original people.

That may seem like a small point to make with as much attention to detail as I have. But I believe it makes a big difference in how this story impacts its audience, and had to be written about.