Mozart in the Jungle: Mad Genius, or Drama Queen?

The Binge
Jessica Zafra

FROM THE TITLE I thought it was an adaptation of Fitzcarraldo, the Werner Herzog movie about a would-be rubber baron who dreams of building an opera house in the Amazon. The mad glare of Klaus Kinski emanating from a TV screen — the prospect is both terrifying and thrilling. But the jungle in the title of the Amazon series is strictly concrete: New York City, home of the fictional New York Symphony. Its resident madman Rodrigo De Souza, played by Gael Garcia Bernal, does his own glaring, with the opposite effect. Like a video of a cat surprised by a cucumber, it’s adorable.

Created by Roman Coppola, Jason Schwartzmann and Alex Timbers, Mozart in the Jungle is a comedy about classical musicians, eccentric geniuses, and the everlasting clash between money and art. “Do we raise funds in order to make music, or make music in order to raise funds?” asks Rodrigo, who is so famous he goes by one name. A former child prodigy, he has replaced the conductor and musical director Thomas Pembridge (Malcolm McDowell). When he’s not upsetting tradition by holding open auditions, changing the program, or taking the orchestra out for an unsanctioned open-air performance, he’s at fund-raisers, trundled out like Exhibit A for society matrons with checkbooks. He’ll play the game, but he has his limits, rejecting an ad campaign called “Hear the Hair,” then sawing off his famous locks.

The less exalted members of the orchestra pay the bills by taking odd gigs — recording film scores, giving lessons, playing on Oedipus Rocks, a Broadway musical featuring the songs of Styx (I would’ve wanted to see Jocasta singing “Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto”). Mozart in the Jungle is based on the memoirs of oboist Blair Tindall, here portrayed as 26-year-old Hailey Rutledge (Lola Kirke), who has spent most of her life blowing air through a reed. In fact all the musicians have spent the majority of their years practising, which may account for their stunted emotional development. There’s the cellist Cynthia (Saffron Burrows), who is so tall and gorgeous she looks like the ambassador of an advanced alien civilization. Cynthia has a thing for maestros, and her speech on the sexual habits of musicians hints that the series is moving in the direction of Sex and the City or Girls. They must have changed their minds.

There’s Union Bob (Mark Blum), ever mindful of rehearsal breaks and overtime, Dee Dee (John Miller) the drummer who dispenses pharmaceuticals, and Betty (Debra Monk) the first chair oboist who thinks Hailey slept with the conductor to get her job. “I had tits once, I just didn’t play my oboe with them,” she smiles. “Give her a break,” Cynthia tells her. “Why? I didn’t get one,” Betty says. “It absolutely infuriates me, hearing these kids complain about how hard they have it. Shut up.” Just when you think she’s the bitter old broad and designated villain, she turns out to be the voice of wisdom. “Growing old is horseshit,” she declares, relaxing in her apartment with her prog-rock LPs, “But growing old alone? It’s the best.” Betty comes across as something the other characters, including the charming but unformed Hailey and the flamboyant conductors, are not: a human being.

Granted, we don’t tune in to Mozart in the Jungle to see how renowned musicians are just like the rest of us. As the old maestro who must give way to the upstart, Malcolm McDowell demonstrates the meaning of fortissimo. Bernadette Peters, who dashed my childhood dreams by not marrying Steve Martin, plays Gloria Windsor, the embattled chair of the symphony board. It’s a stock campy role, but she has fun with it, shuddering as she walks into Rodrigo’s narrow basement office, then announcing, “I’m going to reverse out” and doing just that.

It seems churlish to find fault with Gael Garcia Bernal’s Rodrigo — besides being exquisite, Garcia Bernal is always compelling. His character is introduced with enough superlatives to sink a battleship, and when he walks onto the stage we believe he is all that. Then what does this eccentric genius do? He brings his parrot to work. He drinks maté, which is made of coca leaves. He hires Hailey, who has no work experience, and pronounces her name “Jai-alai.” Rodrigo looks great conducting — the character is reportly based on Gustavo Dudamel, who let Garcia Bernal take the baton at the LA Philharmonic — but he seems, well, sane.

Everyone says Rodrigo is crazy, unconventional, dangerous to be around, but we don’t see it. We see impulsive, fickle, even wishy-washy. He decides to change the program for his opening concert, but after one musician’s failed rehearsal, he changes it instantly. Wouldn’t a real madman keep rehearsing the piece until everyone feels like killing themselves?

To convince us that Rodrigo is as crazy as they say he is, the showrunners make him obsessed with his estranged wife, Ana Maria (Nora Arnezeder). Ana Maria is a performance artist whose piece involves smashing violins and cursing out the audience. She’s beautiful and shouty, but too much of a caricature to be taken seriously. When Rodrigo announces that she will be the soloist for yet another one of his program changes, the decision is not crazy, just dumb.

Mozart in the Jungle buys completely into the romantic notion of the artist unhinged by the creative passion, but then it makes the artist accessible, non-threatening, cute. It congratulates viewers for appreciating classic music, the way Dead Poets Society congratulated its audience for liking literature, but at least Dead Poets acknowledged the dangers of that passion. On Mozart in the Jungle, the worst that can happen is that you have to take the service entrance. And I recommend it for binge-watching precisely because it is diverting, full of wonderful music, and makes no great demands on your emotions.

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