Review: Ron Howard’s Pavarotti Documentary Spreads Itself Thin

Though Ron Howard’s 2016 documentary The Beatles: Eight Days a Week – The Touring Years tells an easily digestible story through a mostly seamless blend of archival footage, photographs, and talking-head interviews, its specificity allows it to unearth biographical nuggets that other career-spanning films about the Beatles would likely skip over. In Pavarotti, Howard tackles another larger-than-life artist: the boisterous and charismatic Luciano Pavarotti. But in cataloging all the ups and down of the late opera singer’s life and career, Howard effectively gives short shrift to the notion that Pavarotti was one of a kind.

Pavarotti opens with rare home-video footage of the maestro as he arrives at the Teatro Amazonas, the very same tiny, remote opera house where famed Italian tenor Enrico Caruso sang nearly a century ago, and which also served as the inspiration for Werner Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo. Pavarotti is there on a private vacation, but he still can’t resist taking the stage, even if it’s to just perform in front of a small group of passersby. The intensity of his vocal projection and the infectiousness of his smile—evident in so many of his other performances sprinkled throughout the documentary—hint at an obsessive desire, perhaps need, for him to sing even when outside the public eye. But despite all the other archival footage included here, this sequence, shot by Pavarotti’s close friend Andrea Griminelli, is one of the few that finds the tenor completely unguarded in an intimate, rather than public, setting.

As he charts Pavarotti’s meteoric rise to fame, with the help of numerous talking heads who revere the singer for his generosity, warmth, and vibrancy, Howard at times homes in on his subject’s weaknesses and indiscretions. Pavarotti’s womanizing and multiple marriages are addressed, as are his occasional diva-esque tantrums and his perceived selling out as his popularity continued to grow, especially in the days of the Three Tenors, when he teamed up with Plácido Domingo and José Carreras. There’s even talk of his fear of being alone and the wear and tear that performing and traveling took on him, as he prized being surrounded by friends and family. But the too-brief depictions of his flaws are conspicuously shrouded in a veil of hagiography, suggesting little more than the eccentricities of a brilliant artist.

Despite the film’s tendency to skirt along the surface of Pavarotti’s personal life, when the man himself is on screen, his undeniable magnetism, irreverent sense of humor, and humble appreciation for his own natural talents is evident, especially in the interviews he gives to the press. The authenticity and genuine depth of feeling that he projects while off stage lend his numerous performances throughout the film an underlying sensitivity and humanity that makes it easier to appreciate the depth of feeling within them.

Whether it’s Pavarotti’s more anguished renditions from Puccini’s Tosca and La Bohème, his more slyly comedic turn in Mozart’s Don Giovanni, or his forceful execution of “Nessun Dorma” with the Three Tenors, one gets a true sense of not only his vocal range and technique, but of the profound emotions he was able to tap into in comedies and tragedies alike. While, by film’s end, the maestro’s inner life remains an enigma hidden beneath his enormous Cheshire cat grin, Pavarotti offers ample evidence of the wide-ranging qualities of his voice—from his knack for hitting the elusive high C note to his masterfully controlled stage presence—that helped make him the greatest tenor of the last half-century.