Mozart in the Jungle: Mad Genius, or Drama Queen?
FROM THE TITLE I thought it was an adaptation of Fitzcarraldo, the Werner Herzog movie about a would-be rubber baron who dreams of building an opera house in the Amazon. The mad glare of Klaus Kinski emanating from a TV screen — the prospect is both terrifying and thrilling. But the jungle in the title of the Amazon series is strictly concrete: New York City, home of the fictional New York Symphony. Its resident madman Rodrigo De Souza, played by Gael Garcia Bernal, does his own glaring, with the opposite effect. Like a video of a cat surprised by a cucumber, it’s adorable.
Created by Roman Coppola, Jason Schwartzmann and Alex Timbers, Mozart in the Jungle is a comedy about classical musicians, eccentric geniuses, and the everlasting clash between money and art. “Do we raise funds in order to make music, or make music in order to raise funds?” asks Rodrigo, who is so famous he goes by one name. A former child prodigy, he has replaced the conductor and musical director Thomas Pembridge (Malcolm McDowell). When he’s not upsetting tradition by holding open auditions, changing the program, or taking the orchestra out for an unsanctioned open-air performance, he’s at fund-raisers, trundled out like Exhibit A for society matrons with checkbooks. He’ll play the game, but he has his limits, rejecting an ad campaign called “Hear the Hair,” then sawing off his famous locks.
Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>
