Director Ron Howard’s recent interest in documentary filmmaking has created three productions that share a similar musical baseline but are very different in design and texture. “Made In America,” a backstage look at Jay-Z’s music festival, had a raw chaotic nature to it, while “The Beatles: Eight Days a Week” took a more intimate approach in looking at the Fab Four.
Howard’s third and latest offering, “Pavarotti,” takes a more traditional approach to storytelling. In a three-act design, Howard shows the life and legend of Luciano Pavarotti, the man dubbed “The People’s Tenor.” Through a standard mix of interviews and archival footage, Howard tells a warm and inviting story of the singer from his humble beginnings to the almost godlike status he achieved in the opera world. The thread that holds the project together is how genius can be both a blessing and a curse.
The way Howard has put the film together, it’s as if Pavarotti had lived a life similar to the tragic characters he sang about with such power and grace. The spiritually unbridled persona Pavarotti showed the world often was a mask to hide the emotional turmoil of his married life and his driving passion to use his fame and fortune to help give the world a voice.
Howard includes all the usual documentary suspects in tracking Pavarotti’s life. Because the film was made with complete cooperation with the family, the material includes new interviews with family and friends mixed together with old footage of Pavarotti chatting about his life and career through various talk show and news appearances. The biggest thing going in Howard’s favor is when a person is as famous as Pavarotti, there’s no shortage of photos and film footage. These range from intimate family moments to a commercial that has Pavarotti hawking a credit card company.
