帕瓦罗蒂

It's 11/4/2020 and I'm stressed out waiting for an official offer from my new employer in Beijing after I just bought the ticket back to China from where I am now - the United States (Washington, DC, to be precise) - while a completely unexpected general election result is still pending.

Could not focus on my current job here working from home. Could not continue following the news anymore. Forced myself to sleep in the early evening after the work schedule, woke up after 2-3 hours, felt even worse and realized that it was time to distract myself from the anxious waiting, the politics or the business in shock. This was when I decided to look for a relaxing/healing movie.

I started with those on SHOWTIME because I just started free trial there. Since I felt like escaping the reality, I browsed all the movies by genres (except documentaries) and sadly, found nothing even bearable. Therefore I had to start over with all movies, and suddenly, saw Pavarotti, the documentary among all others. It didn't take me any hesitation to click on it.

I went to a lot of operas and concerts all through my earlier life (yes everything's gone since the start of covid-19), was an alto myself in my college chorus and even took a course on opera appreciation. Although I'm not a tenor person (in general, I prefer baritones), Pavarotti is obviously no stranger.

Like everyone, I was mostly familiar with O Sole Mio and Nessun Dorma. But you'd still be astounded every time listening to a man so gifted to sing the highs and lows and highers so well in his NATURAL voice. What more could I say. I was just thirsty for more of his singing and didn't have enough in the documentary. This is not necessarily a defect in this documentary, considering that I could be one of the few people who still relish operas in their entireties in addition to the arias, in the age of fractured fast-food information and entertainment. You can look up for these famous arias and even full operas online anyway.

So the documentary should be about just him - his personal life in addition to the professional one. I vaguely remember some of the romantic rumors around him and some of the controversies. This documentary walks us through all these in a concise manner, yet it feels personal. A good job done by the director. It could be easy and difficult when you have a great number of footages all through his life and availability of people to interview. BTW, I don't have a strong view on how well the interviews went - the cuts are just fine.

I'm not sure if I would have given this a 5-star if it wasn't because of the personal relief it brought me for this exact moment. In my opinion, one could potentially present something better with this plenty of footages, access to his family members and celebrity friends and most importantly, such a legendary life story. A 4/4.5 (just as the current 8.3 suggested) may be more accurate.

I didn't mean to write a comment for a documentary on a legendary man. Otherwise, I wouldn't have started in English on Douban if I meant for anyone else to look at it. I just wanted to document this toxic moment for myself at a place where some relief was given - something positive just for myself. However, and unsurprisingly, English literature takes more bytes and it easily exceeded the word limit for short comments. So here I am, and I wish no one be offended by the language used.