MOVIE REVIEW : ‘1789’: A MEMOIR OF THEATRE DU SOLEIL

Invaluable quite on its own, the film of the Theatre du Soleil’s epic theater piece “1789” is an event of special meaning for anyone who saw Ariane Mnouchkine’s electrifying French company during the Olympic Arts Festival.

In addition to its other virtues, the film (opening Friday for one week at the Fox International) is a little memoir of the company. In this “collective creation” examining the French Revolution from its first painful stirrings through 1791, we see the company as it was a dozen years ago. We can measure visibly how much more sophisticated, adept and/or elegant they have become; we can even catch glimpses of several actors still with the company today.

The cooperative production of “1789” brought Theatre du Soleil worldwide attention when it was performed at the Piccolo Teatro in Milan in 1970-71, the first time the company had ventured out of France. This film, a fluid documentary that travels behind the scenes as well as around the varied platforms, aprons and stages where the action flows, was made in 1973, during the last 13 performances the company gave of its great work at its home base, the Cartoucherie.

The play’s episodes, tableaux, mimes, circuses and waves of emotion view the French Revolution from its underside, through the eyes of the wretched and impoverished citizenry. Part Brecht, part Bunraku puppets, in part startlingly original, the action swirls ceaselessly. Two peasant women, in white wrapped head cloths, are caught by a light that paints them like Ingres. The actors portraying the poor wear makeup that gives their eyes the look of deep bruises, while the plumes of the noblemen reach almost to their spun-sugar-like white ruffs.

The saga of the taking of the Bastille is told by actors stationed in a dozen places throughout the huge theater-room, each with a staccato “report” of actual incidents during the struggle, while the company’s famous drummers heighten the action until it is almost unendurable. And in the joyous explosion that follows, the same actors juggle with fire, ride unicycles and do acrobatics.

There is irony, great intelligence, brilliance and a kind of exhausting exuberance to this performance. You can only imagine what it must have felt like to be part of this audience--only the pit in Shakespeare’s day could have been a more intimate part of the scene.

Just one caution: If you have seen Mnouchkine’s truly extraordinary “Moliere” (and why this has not come back on the crest of the company’s local success is something unfathomable), do not expect the same filmic wonders from “1789.” This is truly the document of a play, but how priceless it is as a record.