clanciai Review of Duet for One

Duet for One (1986)

Julie Andrews in a wheel-chair: "I will continue to play until I drop."

[10/10 · 1 October 2021]

That's what they all say, any musician of any instrument, while they all have to face the ultimate moment when they will not be able to play any more, which is the most painful and difficult moment in their lives, because that makes them even more aware of the fact that they will never be able to stop, even when they can't play any more. This problem is brought to some acuteness in this film, where Julie Andrews is a world famous top violinist and married to an almost equally successful conductor, and of course there are parallels to Jacqueline du Près and Daniel Barenboim, and the play is certainly inspired by their story and her fate, but this film makes the case more universal. It begins by Julie Andrews visiting her doctor, the psycho-analyst Max von Sydow, and tells him straight that she is suffering from multiple-sclerosis, which is a deadly incurable illness turning her into an invalid in a wheel-chair before killing her, in a prolonged race against time to make choices about handling the situation, leaving for death or for the gutter, as doctor Sydow bluntly tells her. She chooses the gutter and makes the best of it. The film leaves her like that - we are left hanging without knowing the end of the story, but it is still an accomplished treatment of the case, the discussions have reached their end, the arguments have wasted themselves, and what is left? An old lonely tree that appears to be dead but is still living. This is a masterpiece of art and philosophy and equal to any of Konchalovsky's other masterpieces and those of his brother Nikita Mikhalkov.