By Michael Buzzelli
Robbie Doerfler (Robert Frankenberry) assembles his best friends, Rose (Desiree Soteres) and Roger (Christopher Scott), to aid him in successfully launching a revised project, a new take on the works of Walt Whitman, in “I Hear America Singing,” a Pittsburgh-produced film, ingeniously described as a 75-minute operafilm (part of the Bardo Trilogy).
Writer/Director Daron Hagen’s “I Hear America Singing” is unusual. It’s a meta-commentary on the creative process, an operetta, a musical, and a fictional documentary.
P.S. It’s first and foremost a drama, and there is only a smattering of laughs, which keeps the film out of the “mockumentary” category.
It’s sort of “Merrily We Roll Along” in the right chronological order, but in this case, two of the friends are former lovers.
Robbie was friends with Rose and Roger when they were married, but after the divorce, Robbie distanced himself from Roger.
Hagen’s film touches on a lot of subjects; the nature of art, love (in a variety of forms), friendships, writer’s block, and more. Much of it, delivered in song.
It’s an ambitious project (the musical and the film), and Hagen is aware of the critics. Hagen voices of one of the critics, alongside Talal Jabari and Tevi Eber, in this metacommentary on art.
Jabari and Evi’s critic characters are named after Greek mythological creatures, Charon (the boatman on the river Styx), and Acheron (a river of woe and entrance to the underworld), but neither of them are seen.
Watch the trailer here.
Soteres has a strong singing voice. Her character of Rose is the most likable. Soteres plays Rose with a frank matter of fact-ness and down-to-Earth charm.
Frankenberry is extremely talented. His singing voice is also powerful. He oozes charisma on screen. He manages to deliver the only laugh lines in the script, with a dash of self-deprecating humor.
There are several Will-They/Won’t They moments between Rose and Roger. Maybe a few too many. It becomes hard to care about their situation-ship.
Note: I didn’t want them to get back together, Roger’s character is pretty unlikable, not just because he’s a Republican, but because he wants to impose limits on Robbie’s creativity (in a very Republican way, though).
While Scott’s Roger is annoying, he has a marvelous singing voice as well.
Hagen was Pitt’s 2007 Franz Lehar Composer-in-Residence, and he’s grown into a strong multi-hyphenate. The songs, some of which are based on America’s greatest poet, Walt Whitman, mix together with his original compositions.
Hagen could have benefitted from one more editorial pass on the script and/or the final cut. Early in the film, there is a scene in a hallway where the voices are tinny (the audio quality isn’t quite right). The scene should have been cut since it didn’t match the sound quality of the rest of the film, which is excellent.
With the rare exceptions, such as Quentin Tarantino, Christopher Nolan and Alfred Hitchcock, most films benefit when the writer and the director are two distinct individuals, having another creator help shape the work could have turned this into a masterpiece.
The cast and crew worked with Aria412, a premiere Pittsburgh institution for supporting local artists performing a variety of opera, art house, musical theater and popular tunes. “I Hear America Singing” has all of those elements.
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Find the film here.
Fantastic show!