‘Mozart in Jungle’ personally deeper in fourth season
If anyone had told me when the series premiered that I’d be reviewing the fourth season of “Mozart in the Jungle,” I would have suggested psychotherapy.
The dramedy, set in the world of classical music, features a hotshot young Mexican conductor; members of the fictional New York Symphony, including a young oboe player; and guest stars such as Caroline Shaw, John Cameron Mitchell, Pablo Heras-Casado and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. (Well, Mozart’s ghost, anyway.)
It’s not exactly what we would call the makings of a hit show. Still, the series — whose delicious 10-episode fourth season is available beginning today on Amazon Prime — succeeds not despite its quirky creative choices but entirely because of them.
The series, created by Alex Timbers and cousins Roman Coppola and Jason Schwartzman, is based on the memoir by oboist Blair Tindall.
The symphony is facing financial challenges and trying to get younger fannies into seats.
With conductor Thomas Pembridge (Malcolm McDowell) moving to emeritus status, orchestra President Gloria Windsor (Bernadette Peters) hires Rodrigo de Souza (Gael Garcia Bernal).
The set-up is clearly inspired by the hiring a few years ago of Venezuelan Gustavo Dudamel by the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Dudamel made a second-season guest appearance on “Mozart.”
During the past three seasons, viewers have come to know all the characters and their complicated relationships, with none more complicated than that of Rodrigo and oboist Hailey Rutledge (Lola Kirke). In that time, Hailey has gone from the maestro’s assistant and substitute orchestra member to Rodrigo’s girlfriend and an aspiring conductor.
In many ways, season four is the show’s most personal yet, focusing on relationships — not only Rodrigo and Hailey’s but also Gloria and Thomas’.
Inevitably, the confluence of personal and professional issues pose big challenges. Hailey wants to prove herself on her own, outside of Rodrigo’s “orbit.” He wants her to succeed but can’t help intruding on her game plan.
Hailey forms an ensemble and launches an effort to gain the rights to premiere a piece by modernist composer Shaw.
Thomas takes the baton of a small, struggling orchestra in Queens, which performs in the super-trendy National Sawdust complex in Brooklyn. He finds himself competing with Gloria for the rights to a new work by an eccentric composer (Bruce Davison). Their battles are fierce, often leading to sex.
At the same time, each member of this quartet is exploring new personal or professional moves. Rodrigo, for example, falls in with a hilariously self-serious post-modern choreographer named Egon (Mitchell), who creates dance for absent audiences. He wants to do a Faust dance piece with Rodrigo, who, meanwhile, is under pressure to perform the Mozart Requiem at the request of the symphony’s new deep pockets, Fukumoto (Masi Oka).
All of this swirls in the context of a magical realist dream of sorts.
It’s not just the occasional dead composers who show up but also the awareness of the synapse linking the world of art and the real world.