The White Crow is a historical biopic about Rudolf Nureyev prior to 1961. I’m not sure why there is a surge of interest in the dancer, but a documentary about his life is going to be released later this year too. I love dancing and know very little about him so I am eager to see both films without feeling oversaturated. I am also a tremendous fan of Ralph Fiennes, who appears in a supporting role.

I’m less of a fan of Ralph Fiennes, the director. I was not a fan of his directing debut, Coriolanus, and I did not even know that he directed a second, which is only in my queue because he acts in it as well. At two hours seven minutes, The White Crow is a considerable time commitment to watch a poorly directed film, but I reasoned that at least the acting would be strong, there would be dancing, and it would be difficult to ruin such an innately good story so maybe I wouldn’t be too dissatisfied.

Fiennes’ directing has matured since Coriolanus, but he still has a lot of room for improvement before he can reach the status of flawless masterpieces that reflect his distinct vision on film. A common complaint that I have when anyone directs a film set in a country or is about a person not from the filmmakers’ native home is that the filmmakers never get it right. I watch a lot of foreign films, and a British film about a French person set in France is not the same as a French film. An American film set in Russia is not remotely close to a Russian film. I think that it was actually a brilliant choice to set the majority of The White Crow in an international location, Paris, in which many of the characters are foreigners trying to find common ground so the movie is neither a French or Russian film nor should it be. Any awkwardness or dissonance can be chalked up to characters being in unfamiliar territory speaking in a foreign language. While Fiennes may not have gotten it right, it was not obvious to me as an American accustomed to French or Russian films, which puts him ahead of many filmmakers.

I’m also going to praise Fiennes for not making the characters speak English for the majority of The White Crow. In Russia, the actors speak Russian, including him, but most of the actors are Russian. Acting is already difficult if one is speaking your mother tongue so not many English speaking actors can act in two languages, and if they do, that language is usually not an entirely different writing system like Cyrillic, it is usually another Romantic language like French. Does Fiennes already speak Russian or did he learn his lines phonetically? People should not take this decision lightly. This feat is right up there with Maisie Williams learning how to use her left hand because her character fights with her left hand. It is a level of commitment that most of us never make in our entire lives even for something that we love.

The White Crow also cast a dancer in the lead, and a Ukrainian dancer, makes more sense than making an actor learn how to dance. Dancers are already actors with more physical prowess. Everyone can’t be Dakota Johnson in Suspiria, and if Hayden Christensen, who is trained in ballet, were playing Nureyev, I would not have seen this film. I’m the small segment of society that exists in the overlap of the Venn diagram of people that watch artsy fartsy foreign films about LGBTQ dancers and Star Wars. Don’t do me like that. If the rumors are true, Fiennes saved us from that casting decision. May the Lord bless you and keep you.

The White Crow succeeded in visually distinguishing Nureyev’s childhood from 1961, but not the 1950s from 1961, which should have been easier since the eras were generally set in two different locations, Leningrad and Paris respectively. As someone who generally prefers that a story be told in chronological order and is extremely vocal about despising the How We Got Here trope or beginning at the end, I’m actually going to defend the filmmakers’ choice (writer and director) to tell the story in emotional order, but I do think that the lack of visual distinction lead to the correct criticism that all the flashbacks were confusing. Paris should not look similar to Leningrad. I’ve never been to either city, but I imagine that they feel different and similar in unique ways, especially to a country kid like Nureyev. Unfortunately that fact isn’t conveyed to the audience. If you can do it visually, then you don’t need the date and place stamps that remind you that you’re watching a movie and ruin the illusion of experience.

I loved and related to Nureyev in the early scenes of The White Crow in the way that he drinks in a new place, especially the culture and food. The film mostly shows his curiosity, eagerness and hunger for new experiences. Unfortunately the movie later has Nureyev tell others what we already saw as some painful, ham-fisted excuse for dialogue. Good job for showing not telling, but bad job for telling after showing. Cut all of it out. Unfortunately that would not leave much dialogue between him and Clara Sant, who plays a pivotal role at the end of the movie, but there is still no excuse for such flagrant repetition. Also the relationship with Pierre Lacotte felt as if it was supposed to be fleshed out more, but it is not. It is clearly meaningful, but must have ended up on the cutting room floor. There are a lot of moments that feel dropped or forgotten. There is even one awkward moment when Nureyev describes himself then defines the titular phrase as if he is a superhero. Fiennes may think that his audience is intelligent enough for him to leave gaps, but if a movie is going to be long, cut out the repetition and fill in the blanks, especially with that camping scene.

Fiennes was aiming for some Rosebud glory with the train theme, but it never quite worked. When Westerners depict Cold War era Russia, we make it feel like a Rocky Bullwinkle cartoon, and Fiennes never does that. The Russian characters, even the bureaucrats, feel like authentic people with emotions living their life even the ones that Nureyev sees as villains. Fiennes sees them as real people just trying to make a living and survive.

Fiennes’ direction of the dancing sequences sucked. Don’t cut during the sequence and no medium shots. I want long shots so I can appreciate the whole dance. Does anyone know Fred Astaire anymore? You have a real dancer as the star. Exploit him! There is one moment when he leaps so high, and it gets captured on film. It is breathtaking. Unfortunately the emphasis is on his torso and face. It would have been better to show rather than tell more about his dancing. Nureyev says that he took from the woman, and before him, men did nothing. The White Crow should have shown him as a younger man observing the gender contrast as a new dancer then breaking the barrier and drag dancing so we could experience the shock that the dancing world felt. I love dance, but am not an expert. I am curious whether or not those viewers familiar with Oleg Ivenko’s dancing could tell that he changed his dancing style to reflect Nureyev’s work, or if his dancing was the same.

There was a lot of criticism by some LGBTQ viewers and critics of The White Crow’s depiction of Nureyev’s sexuality. They are the experts, but as a cis straight woman who watches a lot of films, I know that male frontal nudity is rare if not impossible to see in films, and Fiennes waits until the end of the movie to go from overtures to explicit probably to avoid getting hit hard by ratings and lose half his audience, which was never going to be a lot of people considering the subject matter and presence of subtitles. Fiennes goes further than most films in his depiction of same sex sexuality, but if LGBTQ viewers aren’t satisfied, I can’t blame them. I won’t know until the end of the year if he even goes further than all films that have sexual situations between two men, but I would not be surprised if he did. Is that a sad state of the union for movies? Yes, especially when a viewer compares it with depictions of heterosexual sexuality, including in this film.

I always say that it is more important to end on a strong note than to be a great movie with a weak ending, and Fiennes definitely nailed his final sequence, which is riveting, tense and urgent. This denouement ties together all the elements of The White Crow and is so powerful that regardless of how you feel about the majority of the film, everyone can agree that this section is perfect and worth all the time and effort.

The White Crow is a flawed film, and if you do watch it, I would highly recommend that you watch Never Look Away soon afterwards to get a sense of how great it should have been. I will definitely read the book that inspired this film, Rudolf Nureyev: The Life by Julie Kavanagh, after I see the documentary because the movie left a lot of questions unanswered.