It’s some kind of paradox — he probably thought of it as a joke played on him by the gods — that Christopher Plummer, the impishly irascible, velvet-voiced star of stage and screen who died Friday at 91, was one of the great Shakespearean actors of the 20th century, as well as a notorious rapscallion who spent decades living the dissolute high life, yet the first thing that most people think of when they hear his name is “The Sound of Music,” the timelessly beloved 1965 musical that’s the sugary quintessence of G-rated Hollywood wholesomeness.
“The Sound of Music” is not a hip movie to like.
Critics have spent half a century taking snide swipes at it, and Plummer himself liked to call it “The Sound of Mucus.” Yet as an unashamed fanatic for it, I’d argue that “The Sound of Music” carries the hint of a more turbulent inner quality
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