British actor, writer and bon vivant Stephen Fry has loved the music of Richard Wagner since he first heard it played on his father's gramophone.
"It released forces within me," he explains early on in Wagner & Me, an exuberant and deeply personal documentary about the allure and the legacy of the German composer's work.
But as a Jew with family members who were killed in the death camps, Fry has some difficulty squaring his passion for magisterial works like Der Ring des Nibelungen and Tristan und Isolde with the anti-Semitism of the man who composed them — and, even more significantly, with the way these inherently stirring creations were co-opted by Hitler and the Nazi regime.
In Wagner & Me, directed by Patrick McGrady, Fry wrestles with a number of essentially unanswerable questions: What happens when great art springs from a mind that also gave quarter to reprehensible ideology? And is it OK to love music whose beauty and power has been harnessed, even tangentially, in the service of human evil?
Those questions don't sit lightly on Fry's affably broad shoulders. But somehow, without soft-pedaling the nastier angles of Wagner's life and legacy, Wagner & Me lands on the side of joy and defiance — broadly speaking, Fry decides not to let the terrorists win.
Dressed in an assortment of cheerful stripey tops and brightly colored trousers (generally topped with a respectful sport jacket), Fry guides us through a picture that's half bio-documentary, half breathless fan letter. The combination works, not least because Fry makes such a charming and thoughtful guide.
His tour begins at what he calls the Stratford-upon-Avon, the mecca, the Graceland for Wagner enthusiasts: the Bayreuth Festival Theater, an efficient, no-frills opera house that Wagner himself designed and built as the ideal performance spot. Fry appears to be almost beside himself with delight during a behind-the-scenes tour, as he watches wig-makers combing out fake period tresses and costumers fitting robust Valkyries for their stage outfits.
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Fry also visits the holy of Wagnerian holies — the Bayreuth Festival Theater, built by the composer to showcase his works.