Event

SLIFF - Wagner & Me

Wagner & Me

Patrick McGrady, U.K., 2010, 89 min.

Thursday, Nov. 15, 7 p.m., Webster U./Moore

In this engagingly complex documentary, actor and writer Stephen Fry explores his passion for the world's most controversial composer and confronts Richard Wagner's associations with anti-Semitism and Hitler. Fry's quest begins in southern Germany, where he is granted unique access to Bayreuth's legendary annual Wagner festival. Fry then make pilgrimages to several key sites in Switzerland, Bavaria, and St. Petersburg. But Fry also grapples with the composer's dark side: In Nuremberg, he investigates Hitler's appropriation of Wagner's music, and in London, he meets with a cellist who played in the prisoners' orchestra at Auschwitz, a camp where some of Fry's relatives died. Animated by Fry's trademark wit and intelligence and featuring a soundtrack of Wagner's extraordinary music, "Wagner & Me" is a provocative exploration of the life and legacy of one of history's great geniuses.