Review of The Company
Year: 2003 Reviewer: Chris Docker
In the days of Fred Astaire, there used to be a big market for song and dance movies - a whole sub-industry in fact developed around them. With the subsequent decline in popularity dance movies became fewer, and the pool of specialist talent to draw on for dance movies also withered. Later attempts have either tried to use a single dance star with limited amounts of on-screen dance (Strictly Ballroom, Dirty Dancing), have simply used small amounts of popular dance to hang a theme on (Honey, Save the Last Dance, Dance with Me), or used big budgets and camera techniques to pump up fairly standard dance talent (Moulin Rouge, All that Jazz). Only rarely has a movie unashamedly focussed on dancing (Centre Stage). The Company is about the Joffrey Ballet Company. The storylines, as much as there are any, are simply the day to day lives of the dancers. The effect is to give an insight into the way a modern dance (ballet) company is run, and the work that goes into producing a performance. Although fictionalised, Altman gives the fly-on-the-wall feeling to this movie, an 'insider's' look, just as he did with the world of Hollywood in The Player. Unlike Hollywood, there are no big insider revelations other than the degree of discipline and hard work. It's an inside view of a major ballet company, competently and beautifully realised, with Neve Campbell showing off her very competent skills in that area. Malcolm McDowell comes up trumps as the single-minded artistic director genius, to whom every dancer's private life comes second to the artistic aims. Many of the ballets are shown at some length, wonderfully photographed to best effect, and made even more inspiring by the insights into their making.
Rating: 8/10
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