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Debuting in 1976 as a hugely successful concept album, then as a hit West End and Broadway musical, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice's Evita has survived its tortuous twenty year flirtation with Hollywood and finally made it to the big screen. Co-written by Oliver Stone and director Alan Parker, the film begins Citizen Kane-like with Eva Peron's death in 1953 at the age of 33, then flashes back to peg out her early years and the circumstances that led her to become Argentina's cult icon. Utilising every inch of its panoramic frame, Parker's sweeping musical itinerary of dusty roads, cheap hotel rooms, smokey dance floors and teeming town squares brings a physical conviction to the social and political forces which shaped and perpetuated the Evita legend. And while Jonathan Pryce, who is a dead ringer for Juan Peron and Antonio Banderas as Che Guavera, the one man Greek chorus that provides a singing commentary on the unfolding events, both display an impressive vocal range, it is, of course, Madonna who really does carry the whole shebang. When she walks out onto that balcony to the familiar and haunting strains of Don't Cry For Me Argentina, it becomes patently obvious that she really was born to play the part. An immersive experience.
