Chevalier, a forgotten virtuoso

Director Stephen Williams film, featuring Kelvin Harrison Jr., hits cinema screens this week

Kelvin Harrison Jr. plays Chevalier

YOUR NETWORK, is your net worth. But what happens when the network you have worked so hard to assimilate with turns its back on you? What are you worth then?

That was just one of the questions that sprung to mind as the credits rolled on Chevalier, the incredible story of composer Joseph Bologne, the illegitimate son of an African slave and a French plantation owner, who rose to improbable heights in French society as a celebrated violinist-composer and fencer,

The movie, directed by Stephen Williams and starring Kelvin Harrison Jr., evokes both feelings of joy in seeing a Black man rise to prominence against the odds and pain, the latter born out of a frustration that still surrounds those impacted by the ongoing effects of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade until today.

Set in 18th Century France, Chevalier unfolds the vivid, timely story of the soaring rise and defiant spirit of the musical phenomenon, Joseph Bologne, aka the Chevalier de Saint-Georges.

The Chevalier was what we would call today a superstar—a blinding multi-talent at the top of several games: he was a virtuoso violinist who gave packed concerts; a champion swordsman; an ingenious composer; and, for a time, one of the most alluring, unexpected members of Marie Antoinette’s glittering court.

Historians have long struggled to document Bologne’s life. With his papers and his music destroyed in Napoleonic times, little is known of his inner experiences moving in the sphere of the elites.

Director Williams and screenwriter Stefani Robinson aimed to give Bologne a fresh, contemporary life on screen.

With many of the details imagined based on extensive research of the period, Chevalier is a buoyant and aspiring vision of a man driven to create and to truly be who he was, no matter the expectations put upon him, or the dreams forbidden to those like him.

The movie is a reminder that only by going too far can we possibly ever find out just how far we can go. While his story is set in the 18th Century, it also speaks strongly to this moment.

From its high-voltage opening violin battle, the film lends Bologne a touch of rock-and-roll swagger. But if Bologne’s fame and radiance echo the world of the modern pop star, his tale is equally an exploration of something very relatable today: how a person breaks out from the trap of what others expect or demand.

Williams, a celebrated television director/producer and Emmy Award winner for the groundbreaking Tulsa Riots episode of the “Watchmen” series, was so drawn to the story that he chose Chevalier to make his big screen directing debut.

He was drawn to recreating one of the most sumptuous eras in human history from an unseen angle, but even more so to “redressing the imbalances of historical storytelling.”

Williams explains: “I’m very interested in reclaiming the stories of people who led compelling, impactful lives yet have been ignored and dismissed in the larger narrative.”

Bologne is a spectacular example of someone denied his due. He went from being a towering celebrity and influencer to evaporating from the pages of history books for centuries.

Williams zeroed in on the pressure Joseph must have felt, a pressure he knows well—the mindset that you must be ten times better than your peers, and above reproach, just to be valued.

“You see Joseph start out believing that if he can just excel at everything he does, he’ll be accepted into aristocratic society,” says Williams.

“But what he discovers is that social acceptance is not what counts. It is self-acceptance that is most important in a life journey.”

The film’s period, one of rampant artistic innovation yet social upheaval, also felt intimately linked to ours, and Williams structured the film looking not just backwards but forwards.

“The French Revolution is so reminiscent of the social convulsions we’ve seen globally over the last few years, with similar outcries for equality and greater accountability,” he notes.

“It’s a world that mirrors our own.”

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