This is a movie about Ludwig von Beethoven for dumb people who've never heard of Ludwig von Beethoven. Why dumb people who've never heard of Beethoven would ever want to watch a film about him is something that should have been asked before this production ever got started.
Anna Holtz (Diane Kruger) is a young student of music composition who's been sent to Vienna in 1824 to assist the famed maestro, Beethoven (Ed Harris). She is to be his copyist, taking his scribbled notes and rewriting it into something that can be distributed to musicians. The aging and almost deaf Beethoven is just days away from the premiere of his 9th Symphony and he's still writing it. That's the set up. What follows from that is, almost measure for measure, every cliché you ever see in one of these stories about a famous old guy and the young woman who admires him. He's impossibly difficult and abusive. She stands up to him. He comes to need her more than he admits to himself. She's the only one who stands by him in his declining years. Yadda, yadda, yadda.
There are only two things of interest in Copying Beethoven. One is that you could use it as a class film for really stupid music students. It's less a story about Beethoven's life and music and more exercise in characters appearing on screen to plainly and awkwardly recite certain facts about the great genius. If you watch this movie, you'll come away having heard quite a lot of basic information about Beethoven toward the tail end of his musical career. The other interesting thing about Copying Beethoven is that it is a good reminder of how artists of any sort getting rich off their work is a very recent phenomenon. Creative types used to be dependent on the support of wealthy patrons, who generally didn't pay them that much. Here's Beethoven, who was famous for his music in his own life, yet he's living barely better than an upper middle class existence with a small apartment in a run down Vienna building. It is only when artists were able to sell their work to the masses that they could become rich, as well as famous.
The acting of Ed Harris, Diane Kruger and the rest of the cast is fine, but these are all shallowly drawn characters behaving in bluntly obvious ways. There's never any emotion shown or action taken that isn't also explained, either by the character in question or someone else. This film also spends at least 15 minutes show Beethoven conducting the first performance of his 9th Symphony. The music is great and all, but on the screen it comes off as the world's longest and most boring music video of all time.
I don't know if this script got excessively dumbed down at some point, but unless you're looking for a remedial primer on Beethoven's later life, you can give this movie a pass.
Anna Holtz (Diane Kruger) is a young student of music composition who's been sent to Vienna in 1824 to assist the famed maestro, Beethoven (Ed Harris). She is to be his copyist, taking his scribbled notes and rewriting it into something that can be distributed to musicians. The aging and almost deaf Beethoven is just days away from the premiere of his 9th Symphony and he's still writing it. That's the set up. What follows from that is, almost measure for measure, every cliché you ever see in one of these stories about a famous old guy and the young woman who admires him. He's impossibly difficult and abusive. She stands up to him. He comes to need her more than he admits to himself. She's the only one who stands by him in his declining years. Yadda, yadda, yadda.
There are only two things of interest in Copying Beethoven. One is that you could use it as a class film for really stupid music students. It's less a story about Beethoven's life and music and more exercise in characters appearing on screen to plainly and awkwardly recite certain facts about the great genius. If you watch this movie, you'll come away having heard quite a lot of basic information about Beethoven toward the tail end of his musical career. The other interesting thing about Copying Beethoven is that it is a good reminder of how artists of any sort getting rich off their work is a very recent phenomenon. Creative types used to be dependent on the support of wealthy patrons, who generally didn't pay them that much. Here's Beethoven, who was famous for his music in his own life, yet he's living barely better than an upper middle class existence with a small apartment in a run down Vienna building. It is only when artists were able to sell their work to the masses that they could become rich, as well as famous.
The acting of Ed Harris, Diane Kruger and the rest of the cast is fine, but these are all shallowly drawn characters behaving in bluntly obvious ways. There's never any emotion shown or action taken that isn't also explained, either by the character in question or someone else. This film also spends at least 15 minutes show Beethoven conducting the first performance of his 9th Symphony. The music is great and all, but on the screen it comes off as the world's longest and most boring music video of all time.
I don't know if this script got excessively dumbed down at some point, but unless you're looking for a remedial primer on Beethoven's later life, you can give this movie a pass.