I had actually borrowed Copying Beethoven a couple of times before, and returned it without watching. I think I even copped a late fine for it on occasion. Last Tuesday I thought, It's Time. Friday evening, along with my dad and brother, we watched it.
I'm glad I only paid a dollar. Yes, Diane Kruger is beautiful. The music was good - although at times predictable (oh look, he's in a forest - and the Pastoral Symphony is playing!). After a few hours of grumbling, I realised the point of the movie - that to create, you have to 'build a bridge to the future' which will probably alienate you from everything happening in the Now, because Now is familiar and comfortable. But if you just do what is familiar and comfortable, you'll stay in the same place. Now that I've written that, I can see that this is a little like a metaphor for my life right now... Only it was said really badly.
I don't often say a movie was terrible. I very rarely fast forward through a movie I haven't seen before. I am actually annoyed that I spent about 100 minutes of my life watching this. (Playing time is 104 minutes, I watched all the credits for the music, but I don't know how long the fast forward was).
It could be that a non-musician would love this, Beethoven revealed as a human. And the contrast of the great composer, who talks of building a bridge to the future with his visceral music to which no-one will listen, smashing the futuristic bridge design. But: American accents for Viennese, American language jokes (mooning, the Moonlight Sonata... really?!). So much talk of an angel sent from heaven, and the closest they could really get to a sex scene (a 23-yr-old girl giving a 53-yr-old man a sponge bath) was just...No. Shudder. Fast forward.
At the start, the movie is geared towards the premiere of the 9th symphony. As it was being played I thought, well actually if it's this short that's a mercy. Except that was only the middle of the movie. Someone decided to keep going for another 40 minutes and include the Grosse Fugue as well. As a string player, I loved hearing the Takacs Quartet playing this, but it didn't work well as a plot. Maybe if it was 2 parts of a series, or if they'd even referenced the quartet before the symphony was performed, but they didn't. Even the back of the DVD cover ends with the performance of the 9th symphony.
Meanwhile, the actual performance of the symphony was an epic cringe. Anna Holtz (Diane Kruger) has been the copyist, at the last minute, and is brought in to help in the conducting. She crouches in the middle of the violins and conducts so that Beethoven (played by Ed Harris) can mimic her. Normally, a conductor needs to preempt whatever is about to happen - show an accent a beat early etc. So if the conductor is taking his cues from someone else, that someone needs to be even further ahead. She was there, apparently, to show him where the beat would be, but was so engrossed in the music that she lolls around with her eyes closed for most of the time and appears to be behind the beat. And as Beethoven also closes his eyes, the whole "Let's keep in time" thing seems to be pointless. The end of the performance was the most effective part of the whole movie though: the sound was cut except for very muffled thuds and scrapes, ostensibly as Beethoven would have heard the applause at that time. It is only when someone turns him around to face the audience that he can see they appreciate it, and him.
Phyllida Law has the best line in the whole movie. She plays Anna's aunt, the Mother Superior of a convent, but she came to Vienna to study with Salieri. "So you understand", says Anna. "Oh no, dear. I never even met Salieri. They sent me to one of his students. I was 17. He was French...".
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