All in the family

30/01/1999

The film Hilary and Jackie is neither fact nor fiction but a mixture of both. Does that matter? And what of the exposure of secrets from within the bosom of the family? The ethical questions raised by such genres are explored by a freelance journalist. LAST week, at the end of the premi?re of Hilary and Jackie, the actress Emily Watson walked on to the stage, to a standing ovation. She was handed a microphone. In a short, emotional speech, she expressed the sense of honour she felt to have been given the opportunity of portraying Jacqueline du Pr?. Then she invited the applause for Hilary and Piers du Pr?, the cellist?s sister and brother, whose memoir had inspired the film.

A sensible-looking, middle-aged pair stood up in the front row of the dress circle and beamed around the auditorium, as the large audience obediently clapped and cheered. It was a disturbing moment. Just what were we being asked to applaud? That they had sat through a film that might have brought back painful memories? That they had decided to write the book in the first place? Or was this supposed to be an acknowledgement of the enormous sacrifices they had made, in the interests of protecting and supporting a genius?

If that was it, then another man might have stood up too: Hilary?s husband, Kiffer Finzi. The central talking-point of the film had been, after all, the scene in which he was persuaded against his will to sleep with Jackie, a therapeutic encounter condoned by Hilary because the troubled artist wanted and needed this affirmation of love.

As a matter of fact, the affair went on for 16 months and disinterested love seems to have played at best a supporting role. Besides, the value of this act of supposed altruism has been undermined by the revelation that Finzi later slept with another guest of the family and that the Finzis? daughter protested strongly that her father?s affair with her aunt had been a very upsetting and disturbing episode in her childhood, all the worse for being publicised. It was probably wise for him not to join the others.

Hilary and Jackie seemed to tell both sides of the story. The first part, labelled Hilary, was seen through her eyes. In the shorter, second part, we were offered Jackie?s account. Except that it wasn?t. How could it have been? It was somebody else?s attempt to imagine how Jackie might have felt, but it offered precious little sympathy. Jackie was seen as homesick and exhausted to the point of breakdown by the pressures of her performance schedule, but she still came across as pretty nasty.

The film has already provoked controversy, with six eminent musicians registering their dismay: this selfish, spoilt, foul-mouthed and manipulative woman was not the Jacqueline they remembered. No, this image was clearly closer to the Jackie her sister knew, though even that premise is shaky. When they were children it was Hilary, the flautist, who seemed to have all the talent. In the film, Jackie rapidly eclipsed her, to such an extent that Hilary couldn?t produce even one note on her flute for an exam. Frankly, that seemed unlikely.

As Hilary acknowledged, however, Anand Tucker, the director, explained that some details would have to be altered to make the film watchable . . . if it was a documentary they would have to be accurate but he needed to combine, remove, replace things. If it was a documentary . . . and yet this film is billed as a true story. What is the difference between a true story and a documentary? Why should the film of a true story, about real, named people, not be required to comply with the strict rules governing the reporting of fact?

And where is the truth in such a film? It is hijacked by three rogue elements, coming together to wrench any uncomfortable facts off the screen, to present us with a version of the story that verges on stereotype. One element is the undoubted brilliance of the cellist ? genius, after all, is often put forward as an excuse for bad behaviour. Another is the multiple sclerosis that, with hideous ? and suitably dramatic ? irony, systematically removed her physical ability to exercise precisely those remarkable skills with which she had entranced a generation. Her early death put her up there with the untouchables, with Butterworth and Dinu Lipatti, even with James Dean and Princess Diana. Our society takes a macabre pleasure in fingering untouchables.

At the same time, her illness and death endowed her with intense pathos: this is the third element. Given a story of such melodramatic potential, any film-maker is, as we have seen far too often, bound to leap at the chance to give it his own spin. It is the stuff that directors? dreams are made of. But it is not the truth.

The rabbi who was with Jaqueline the day she died has his own view of the genesis of this film (Jackie had embraced Judaism, at high speed, when she married Daniel Barenboim). Rabbi Friedlander said: I think that Hilary wanted her story told. She wanted to pull Jackie down from the pedestal on which she had been placed, and there?s probably some justice in that. But is some justice enough? Around this whole episode drifts the bitter-sweet miasma of revenge, upon someone who is unable to defend herself.

Even if every detail in the book were true, in the siblings? memories at least, their revelations have done little for the reputation of Jaqueline du Pr?. And yet the deed was done in the name of kinship and love.

Last week Radio 4 broadcast readings from another memoir. In this case, the author?s motivation is harder to identify. Though he is certainly not into the business of pedestal-toppling, being the greatest fan ? indeed lover ? of his subject, his book left the reader and listener uneasy.

Iris Murdoch and her husband, John Bayley, have long worked in broadly the same field. He is an Oxford academic and literary critic who has published several, moderately successful novels. His wife, however, was created a Dame of the British Empire for her work as a writer and philosopher. She is widely acknowledged as one of the most significant novelists of her time.

In Iris ? A Memoir, John Bayley writes about their life together. Last week, it was serialised on Radio 4. It is a touching and distressing book, written partly in diary form. Remarkable for its frankness, it documents, in great detail, the many indignities of Alzheimer?s disease ? not just the loss of Murdoch?s vital abilities to think clearly, to remember, to communicate, but also her fear of other people; her habit of collecting rubbish ? leaves, cigarette-ends, dead worms; her long, dirty fingernails; her love of the Teletubbies; her refusal to change her clothes at bed-time and her nasty smell.

HER husband is the hero of the book. Though he admits to moments of understandable exasperation, his behaviour is really saintly. Willingly, generously, he sacrifices his every moment to care for a helpless old woman (80 this year) who is the beloved inspiration of his life. The reader may be startled to learn that even in her prime this great intellectual firmly believed in UFOs, sat for hours expecting the Loch Ness monster to appear, and always felt a great tenderness for the feelings of torn-open envelopes and capless plastic bottles ? but then, people like her inhabit a different world from the rest of us, don?t they? Surely such absurdities are merely evidence of the harmless eccentricity of the seriously clever?

Perhaps. Or perhaps they carry a subtler, less cosy message. She has always been, says Bayley, a genuinely modest person with Christ-like qualities of tolerance, amusement and good nature, a woman who displayed almost masculine reserve. Why should he choose to breach that reserve now, when she, though still alive, is helpless to prevent it? Iris was short-listed for the Whitbread prize for biography. Though it didn?t win, it may well prove to be the most famous book ever written by (or about) John Bayley.

The best thing that can come from these two memoirs is an increased compassion for those who suffer from irreversible illness, and indeed for their families. As tributes to their subjects, however, they are as useful as a chocolate ironing-board. When the lesser artist reveals discreditable or disgusting facts ? previously only available to close family ? about the greater, those facts remain in the memory. Whatever has been achieved in the past becomes, sadly, tarnished.

What is more, the survivor is the one who gets to tell the tale, upon whom the limelight now falls. And those of us who, like them, do not aspire to genius are tempted to feel smug: we may live on a lower intellectual plane, but our comparative mediocrity doesn?t matter. After all, we have not been struck down by the physical, and icily appropriate, punishments inflicted upon brilliance. How comforting. How primitive. And who cares if it?s not the truth, or not the whole truth?

We should all care. Nothing will stop film-makers making biopics of dubious accuracy, or spouses revealing all (or their view of all), but we should be wary of believing these accounts to be the whole truth. The American writer Bernard Malamud was right to say: There is no life that can be recaptured wholly, as it was. Which is to say that all biography is ultimately fiction. The truth about genius is stranger, and a good deal more complicated.