Sibling rivalry’s darkness fuels ‘Hilary and Jackie’

HILARY AND JACKIE, directed by Anand Tucker. Written by Frank Cottrell-Boyce, based on the book “A Genius in the Family,” by Hilary and Piers du Pre. Running time: 121 minutes. Rated R (for language and sexuality). Nightly, Feb. 8-11, Railroad Square Cinema, Waterville.

Anand Tucker’s “Hilary and Jackie” puts a bright face to genius, darkens it with madness and then destroys it forever with illness.

The film — gorgeously shot and beautifully told — is an unflinching, uncompromising, unsettling look at the famous cellist Jacqueline du Pre (Emily Watson), who rose to fame in the 1960s while her sister, Hilary (Rachel Griffiths), a talented flutist, was forced to turn her back to the stage and give herself over to marriage and family.

Fate, it seems, was kinder to Hilary, who wrote the film’s source book, “A Genius in the Family,” with her brother Piers (played in the film by Rupert Penry Jones). As a child, it was Hilary, not Jackie, who was the first star of the du Pre family. It was she who received the awards, the accolades from her parents, the broad attention for her musical gifts. But as this complex, sensitive and very well-acted film explores, Jackie was not to be outdone by her older sister, whom she adored with a fierceness that sometimes gave way to great bouts of rivalry.

Consumed by competitiveness and the need to eclipse her sister, Jackie pushed herself relentlessly, eventually achieving meteoric success as one of the world’s greatest musicians. Her marriage to pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim (James Frain) only heightened her appeal, making her half of a handsome, superstar couple that toured the world.

Lofted throughout by du Pre’s signature piece, Elgar’s Cello Concerto in E Minor, the film explores how Jackie’s hard push for success wasn’t worth it, that it only created loneliness and drove her to emotional despair.

Just as in “Amadeus” and “Shine,” “Hilary and Jackie” understands the strength and fragility of the artist. It knows that madness is sometimes brimming just beneath the surface of artistic creation, and that it was partly this madness, coupled with her struggle with multiple sclerosis, that caused Jackie to damage what never should have been damaged: the relationship with her sister.

Indeed, when Jackie tells Hilary in one particularly bitchy scene that there’s nothing at all special about her, Hilary’s response, measured and leveling, seems coolly justified: “If you think for one moment that being an ordinary person is any easier than being an extraordinary one,” she says to Jackie, “you’re wrong. If you didn’t have that cello to prop you up, you’d be nothing.”

Such devoted sisters have rarely been this beguiling. Grade: A-

Video of the week

THERE’S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY, directed by Peter and Bobby Farrelly. Written by Ed Decter, John J. Strauss and the Farrellys. Running time: 119 minutes. Rated R (for language and adult content).

“There’s Something About Mary” is so base, so raunchy and so wonderfully crude, it gives the phrase “Zipper Gate” a whole new meaning.

The film, which bears at least some of the responsibility for the continued decline of our culture, is precisely what one would expect from the Farrelly brothers, who soiled the cinematic landscape with such charmers as “Kingpin,” in which an amputee loses his prosthetic hand while tossing a bowling ball at a bowling alley, and the forever fetching “Dumb & Dumber,” which has the distinction of sounding like the long-awaited, joint biography of Monica Lewinsky and Bill Clinton.

This time out, the Farrellys are in better form as their latest is at least partly worth the hype. Indeed, there really does seem to be something about Mary (Cameron Diaz), a blond-haired, blue-eyed bombshell with a whole lot of chutzpah, charm and je ne sais quoi.

There’s something about her smile, something about her golf swing, something about the hair gel she uses, something about the men she chooses, and even something about her neighbor’s dog that makes her an absolute target for tomfoolery, buffoonery and, from time to time, even blasphemy.

The film begins with a young, nerdish Ben Stiller snagging his manhood in a zipper while on his way to the prom with Mary (“We’ve got a bleeder!”), and disintegrates from there with sight gag after sight gag — until some, those with weaker stomachs, will literally be left gagging.

The film makes one long for the genius of Mel Brooks, who does this sort of thing so much better, but as bathroom humor goes, this sometimes funny film only occasionally gets plugged. Grade: B+

Christopher Smith is the Bangor Daily News film critic. His reviews appear each Monday in the NEWS. Each week on WLBZ’s “News Center 5:30 Today,” he reviews current feature films (Tuesdays), and what’s new and worth renting in video stores (Thursdays).