Nijinsky: The Diaries of Vaslav Nijinsky

As we listened to Minnesota Public Radio classical music station they mentioned that the University Film board was showing a movie on the life of the famous ballet dancer Vaslav Nijinsky. So my wife and I went intending to learn more about the music and dance of the early 20th century.

What we got, was endless drivelings of a madman, and I'm not talking about Nijinsky. If this is an art film, where's the art? We learn nothing about Nijinsky's life or impact on the dance or music scene in the early 20th century. We find out more about his sexual life than I needed to know, and nothing about his artistic life or contributions or professional collaborations.

The endless repetition of a crane flying overhead, and of foamy mountain streams is way overdone and in the end is a frustrating waste of film and time.

Call me uneducated and think of me as a mindless film goer with no sense of art if you will but frankly I found The Diaries of Vaslav Nijinsky to be an overlong and very boring exploration into the mind of Nijinsky.

OK I'll admit I had no idea who he was and I suppose if you are interested in his life then you would probably get a little more out of this film.

There are some brief moments that constitute an interesting exploration into the mind of a lunatic but for the most part you really don't want to be listening to the ravings of lunatic. An if you did you really don't need the crazy visuals that this film offers. It's really only the occasional inclusion of nudity that prevents one from falling asleep.

I give it three out of ten.

With a brilliant image perception, Cox narrates the biography of a miserable Polish dancer from his letters. The cinematographic expression is similar with Greenaway and Tarkovsky. A magnificent example of film as an art.

A lovingly shot, very flattering treatment of the diaries of dance legend Vaslaw Nijinsky. Derek Jacobi reads aloud from the dancer's diaries, written just before he was committed to an institution for the mentally ill. The diaries themselves are by modern standards sickeningly insipid and naive; Nijinsky rejects any form of thinking or analysis in favor of love and feeling, and repeats over and over how he just wants to love everyone, so how can there be war, or any other bad things? This film could have been such a trite love-fest celebration.

Instead, Cox has managed to juxtapose the text over a series of images and music, often taken from Nijinsky's choreographies, into a tapestry that brings real meaning from what could be called the written ravings of a madman. Recurring characters based on roles Nijinsky made famous illustrate the feelings and episodes expressed in the diaries. The result is an expression of the meaning behind the madness that I found thought-provoking (even if Nijinsky would not approve of all that thinking!).

The camera work makes an intriguing parallel to the diary itself; the execution of the diary is naive in a way reminiscent of folk art, but the ideas in it are deeply sensual. Cox is certainly as capable of slick camera work as any good director, but for the dance scenes in the woods (especially those from "Afternoon of a Faun"), he chose a style of camera work that looks just a little bit clumsy and amateurish, while filming a choreography so sensual that it caused quite a scandal when Nijinsky danced it for the first time in 1912. The juxtaposition of naive execution with sensual content echoes and accentuates the feeling of the diaries themselves.

All in all a beautiful film; a great find.