Oh, mommies!

Meryl Streep sings and dances to ABBA music

There are things that decent people shouldn't do. For example, acting in a movie based on the successful musical “Mamma Mia!” Even if everyone is interested in Meryl Streep, this highly gifted artist, who seems capable of playing even a cat or a ladle, will be able to dance, sing, jump and frolic at such a serious age.

The struggle for youthfulness in our time has crossed all boundaries, and even the boundaries of the age group (women from 35 to 55) for which, according to distributors, the film “Mamma Mia!”, directed by film debutante and experienced theater director Phyllida Lloyd, is intended. This lady doesn’t understand the difference between cinema and theater. And if in the theater age can be conditional, then in cinema - alas, this is so - the physical appearance of the performer is almost irresistible, because cinema consists of pictures. And no matter how well the figure is preserved, no matter how much training in the fitness club tightens the stomach and sides, age takes its toll, weighing down the look and leaving the mark of the years lived on the face. Which is completely contraindicated for the musical as a genre, where everything should be easy, smooth, conventional.

Especially a musical like “Mamma Mia!”, created from nothing solely for the sake of ABBA songs - there were 22 of them in the play! The story about how a girl, on the eve of her wedding, without her mother's knowledge, sends letters to three men, each of whom could be her father, is quite meaningless in itself, but it is quite suitable for somehow connecting musical numbers with each other, initially no relation not having access to it. Although since a musical must have some kind of plot, it would be much more reasonable to correlate it with music. Well, at least by distant associations. But the three romantic women - producer Judy Cramer, screenwriter Katherine Johnson and director Phyllida Lloyd, who wrote this musical - were not thinking about meaning, but about undying love. And they achieved success, and success is not judged.

Having won laurels on the theater stage, the ladies decided to transfer their creation to cinema, adding to the music the postcard beauty of the Greek island resort. As a result, on the screen are the pretty faces of the bride and her bridesmaids, the blue southern sea, flowers, rocks, beaches, the frivolous atmosphere of the resort, which is always pleasant to remember, and Meryl Streep, who looks like a bull in a china shop among this ambience of a ladies' novel. Around her, everyone is gawking, squeaking, waving their arms, in general, depicting happy bustle and energy, overflowing. Meryl Streep can't do that. She still has brains, and it shows. But Ms. Lloyd, seemingly oblivious to her individuality, squeezes one of the most important actresses of our time into the poor scheme of a plastic Barbie doll. And here Meryl Streep diligently sings against the backdrop of the sunset, and Pierce Brosnan stands next to him like a celluloid Ken, not knowing where to put his hands, and looking at her with a tin look... Honestly, it becomes awkward. (By the way, the distributors this time decided not to re-sound the songs, but to release them in their original performance, with subtitles. Therefore, the vocal exercises of Meryl Streep and Pierce Brosnan can be heard as is, well, with minor corrections from the sound engineer. The actors sang, of course, in the studio. And during filming they only opened their mouths.)

The most interesting thing is that the film was in great demand in the USA. Analysts explained this by the fact that middle-aged women attended it to see how their relative peers find personal happiness, and also sing and dance along with the young. Well, anything can happen - I think that the music that I loved in my youth really has a magical effect, especially on those who later didn’t listen to anything much. And there are quite a lot of them (in terms of the total number of records released since 1974, the year of the Swedish quartet’s debut, ABBA is in second place in the world after the Beatles).

But it’s still a terrible pity that a great actress now has such a role in her filmography. I have no doubt that Meryl Streep could even play that idiotic Donna if given the task. But the structure of this film does not imply any meaningful tasks at all, here you just need to move your legs and jump, run, dance. Most of all, in terms of the level of performance, it is similar to the New Year's fairy tales that Russian television producers film with our pop stars. But Meryl Streep is not Maxim Galkin! And it plays about the same, imagine.

Alena Solntseva