Hilary and Jackie

Your Music & Movie Cricket is going to kill two birds with one stone and tell you about the miraculously endearing movie Hilary and Jackie (1998). (No, not a film about American First Ladies!) This film tells the story of Jacqueline du Pré, the cellist who died of multiple sclerosis (a disease very close to what my father suffered). As a young girl, Jackie grew up in the shadow of her child prodigy sister ... but with the determined encouragement of their overbearing mother, Jackie got even better than Hilary, meanwhile winning one contest after another. Hilary, although very gifted on the flute, never achieved the fame of her sister. In music school she fell in love and later married the dashingly dapper Kiffer Finzi (who puts her in the spotlight like nobody else, makes her feel special), with whom she continued performing locally. Jackie, on her part, married Jewish Argentinean piano virtuoso Danny Barenboim. Jealous of Hilary’s happiness, self-absorbed, immature (or, maybe I should say, childlike), Jackie sleeps with Kiffer, just so that she could have what her sister has, except that’s not how life works. In fact it damages the love Hilary felt for her little sister.

Jackie was thrown into the international musical world without support or preparation, entirely on her own. Only gradually do we get a sense of her loneliness and despair – with no one bothering to help her translate foreign languages or even wash her clothes. She starts to resent the cello, her one and only talent. It’s in those spirits she first meets Daniel Barenboim, playing tango music. They can share their passion for music. They tour together to great acclaim, with Barenboim either conducting or playing the piano. But then the multiple sclerosis slowly starts to show its first signs, she loses sensitivity in her fingers, and after some time loses control over body parts. The scenes of her exercising to revalidate, then progressively deteriorating are heart wrenching ... and painfully remind me of my father’s last years... But you too will be crying bitter tears towards the end, I assure you. The acting, Emily Watson’s performance, is absolutely stellar!

Apparently the movie – and the book on which it was based, A Genius in the Family, by Piers and Hilary du Pré – sparked a controversy among Jackie’s friends, family and fellow musicians. Barenboim apparently felt they should have waited until he was dead himself. You see, he had a mistress and fathered two children with her, before Jackie died. So he feels guilty, maybe. It also seems that Finzi willingly engaged in the affair with Jackie (you’d say?) and had other mistresses, so his daughter says, which (for obvious reasons) Hilary neglected to tell... Jackie’s supporters sense jealousy and bitterness on Hilary’s part, and are distraught by the portrayal of Jackie as insensitive, spoiled and selfish. In her defense, Hilary has claimed that she wrote her memoir out of love, to tell the world the whole story, to present Jackie in all her facets, warts and all, as only she (Hilary) could have known – being her closest confidant throughout her life.

To me, the story is about having to choose between your talents and your happiness when the two aren’t the same. I’ve met a lot of talented people, and I’m still unsure whether following your talents with unfailing devotion will make you happy in the end. Yet I’m also still disappointed that I chose not to follow some of my own ... That’s not to say I would have been any good in other people’s eyes, but I’m wondering if I would have been any happier ... or what the source of happiness is for me... Is it love, friendship, in other words relations external to myself, or can I (can we) find true happiness within myself (within ourselves)? In this movie we’re switching back and forth between Hilary and Jackie, and while most of the drama lies with Jackie, of course, I’m not sure anyone would come out roundly for Hilary and say she found perfect happiness in her life, peace perhaps, and a measure of contentment... yet she remained in awe of her sister, secretly yearning for her success ... and willfully ignoring the fact that her husband was an insensitive philanderer. So, you see, this marvelous, deeply moving film is very emotionally gratifying, and is certainly worth watching.