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Lucy and Desi, Amy Poehler’s recently released documentary, is a film about Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, which offers a surprisingly intriguing insight into the lives of the Hollywood power couple through a retelling of well-known facts.
The documentary has been released just in the aftermath of the announcement of the Academy Award nominations, where Being the Ricardos, another feature of Lucille and Desi's lives, bagged multiple nominations. This inevitably brings up a comparison between the two films.
Lucy and Desi is a more accurate portrayal
Amy Poehler has done an amazing job with presenting the story of the legendary Lucille Ball and her partner Desi Arnaz. Pieced together from movie clips and home videos, and peppered with interviews from the couple's family and colleagues, the documentary offers a myriad of perspectives and narratives, all of which interweave into the making of Lucy and Desi.
Being the Ricardos, on the other hand, is a more dramatic retelling of the couple's lives. The film explored three major themes, the accusations that Lucille was a Communist, the couple's attempt to run Lucille's pregnancy into the plotline of I Love Lucy's second season, and the falling apart of the couple's marriage due to the stress the sitcom brought in. Director Aaron Sorkin compressed these three major events into a single week of 1951, giving viewers a packed outlook of Ball and Arnez's lives.
Being the Ricardos is more personal and emotive
Being the Ricardos was more dramatic and emotional, striking a personal note in viewers. Lucille and Desi appear as real characters with emotions, anxieties, jealousy and doubt, which makes them more relatable and less alien.
Being a documentary, Lucy and Desi, on the other hand, is more factual and realistic. It offers up a story through photos, voice recordings and videos of the couple from the archives, interspaced with interviews from their family, friends and colleagues.
It is a futile endeavor to make a comparative analysis of the two films to pass a judgment of which one does better justice to the story of the famous Hollywood couple. They intend to offer different perspectives and serve different purposes, which makes it next to impossible to draw comparisons.
Both the films are amazing features meant to be enjoyed in their own right.
