'Copying Beethoven'

[Joy]

Your enthusiasm never fails. The fact is that MGM did a lousy job of marketing the film. They failed almost utterly to get it before the public. I cite only as the most glaring example of their failure that the New York Times critic learned of the release of the film only through this website. She then gave us a glowing review. What a pity.

Oh, I agree the marketing was far from successful. Again I say what a shame as I think the music and the superb acting job Ed Harris did should have been recognized. Sad indeed.

[Raptured]

Oh, I agree the marketing was far from successful. Again I say what a shame as I think the music and the superb acting job Ed Harris did should have been recognized. Sad indeed.

Yeah. And edition, and photograpy, and... Even when one has reservations about some few items in the movie, it´s a fact they had a pearl in their hands and didn´t know what to do with it! Here in Brazil, marketing was nonexistant!!

[Joy]

Yeah. And edition, and photograpy, and... Even when one has reservations about some few items in the movie, it´s a fact they had a pearl in their hands and didn´t know what to do with it! Here in Brazil, marketing was nonexistant!!

Absolutely incredible!

[srivele]

Absolutely incredible!

Alas, that's showbiz.

[susanwen]

I read the interview with Harris where he mentioned that he'd taken some conducting lessons, and the musicians repected that and saw that he knew what he was doing. Not a word about how the actress also knew how to conduct. All Harris had to do was mimic HER.

: }

[Preston]

I wanted to say this. I have done some more reading on George Lucas and I now see how limited my knowledge is on him.

The person I thought George Lucas was, is different from the person I have read about. I am not fond of what I have read.

Kind Regards,
Preston

[Chris]

I wanted to say this. I have done some more reading on George Lucas and I now see how limited my knowledge is on him.

The person I thought George Lucas was, is different from the person I have read about. I am not fond of what I have read.

Kind Regards,
Preston

What made you think of Lucas for directing Copying Beethoven in the first place? I love Star Wars as much as anyone, but it doesn't seem like his kind of thing. I'm not even sure he's ever directed anything he hasn't written himself. He seem more like a writer/executive producer kind of guy. Has he even directed anything aside from Star Wars, American Graffiti, and THX-1138?

[Preston]

What made you think of Lucas for directing Copying Beethoven in the first place? I love Star Wars as much as anyone, but it doesn't seem like his kind of thing. I'm not even sure he's ever directed anything he hasn't written himself. He seem more like a writer/executive producer kind of guy. Has he even directed anything aside from Star Wars, American Graffiti, and THX-1138?

I had read a lot of articles regarding "Star Wars and theology", the force. I also new that George was a great director. I thought he seemed like a pretty serious guy. I know that Star Wars doesn't use the same kind of film and other things as Copying Beethoven but I am sure that Lucas knows his film and other things pretty well. There are also a mixture of other things that I thought that would make him a good director for the movie, Copying Beethoven, like style, life experience, etc.

I don't think of anything else he has directed, that comes to mind. I know he did a lot of work with Indiana Jones.

[Raptured]

[...] I know that Star Wars doesn't use the same kind of film and other things as Copying Beethoven but [...] There are also a mixture of other things that I thought that would make him a good director for the movie, Copying Beethoven, like style, life experience, etc. [...]

I don´t know him that much aside his blockbusters, but I agree with Chris that CB is not Lucas´ kind of thing. It seems to me that, in a strange way, THX-1138 is his one movie that could, marginally, have some points in common with CB. For me, it´s about a guy seeking for his humanity when it´s forbidden (not the case in CB), and -- like LvB -- he doesn´t fit to his environment, doesn´t give up what he considers to be of utmost importance and beats all odds to get it done. It´s a strong movie, nicely made, it makes you think and is very moving.

[Preston]

I don´t know him that much aside his blockbusters, but I agree with Chris that CB is not Lucas´ kind of thing. It seems to me that, in a strange way, THX-1138 is his one movie that could, marginally, have some points in common with CB. For me, it´s about a guy seeking for his humanity when it´s forbidden (not the case in CB), and -- like LvB -- he doesn´t fit to his environment, doesn´t give up what he considers to be of utmost importance and beats all odds to get it done. It´s a strong movie, nicely made, it makes you think and is very moving.

I know this is not the place to talk about Lucas but I thought I should say this. I by no means am trying to sound rude, but I think you underestimate Star Wars and the present George Lucas.

You realize that George Lucas was a ragged out young man when he made the film, THX-1138, with not a portion of the knowledge that he holds to this day.

He is now a mature man with a much larger intellect, then when he was the boy that wrote and directed THX. His thoughts towards life, individuality, science, technology, the state of humanity, freedom, politics, religion, the dark and light sides of life, theology, etc., are so far greater now than they were then that it isn't even comparable and these thoughts are in Star Wars.

He has now mastered all those thoughts that he wrote about in THX, and now has far greater thoughts.

He hadn't even begun to study all the things he has studied when he wrote THX.

In my opinion Star Wars is a far stronger movie than THX-1138. It just isn't as obvious to a lot of people, which is understood. What Star Wars shows us is humanity at it's worst. It shows us the future of humanity: galactic war!, magical powers, people who have visions, technology, the deterioration of mankind, all these things and far more.

The things that are in THX are in Star Wars but are not as obvious. Take how they use clones as storm troopers. What they do to them, and how they are just killed off as they were nothing. Did you notice the cloning facility, it was astounding? I really recommend you watch the scene where Obi Wan goes to the cloning facility, it is astounding and genius. To be able to capture that vision is amazing!

To me THX is a thought from a young man with interesting ideas, but that those thoughts are from Star Wars. Look at the way he characterizes the Emperor and Yoda. His sense of taste on those characterizations are much greater and far more detailed then THX-1138.

I definitely see George Lucas pulling away from large blockbusters with ease. Even George Lucas says the only reason he made Star Wars so big was to reach out to young people and try to teach the about God by creating "the force". Which it said in the link I posted in my earlier post.

I feel that Lucas is a universal director, and can work extremely well with all types of film.

If you say that Lucas has been "sold out" by stardom then I disagree. I feel he has to some degree, but I feel that he speaks in his screenplay.

Sorry y'all for the post about Star Wars, but I just don't see how THX comes anywhere near Star Wars? I do think I see why people think that it does though. I wish I never brought this topic up because it is about Copying Beethoven. If anyone would like to explain to me how I am wrong please send me a pm.

Kind Regards,
Preston

[terry]

I love Star Wars (the first 3, of course) they remind me of my adolescence. Anyway, I can't see any relationship btw Lucas and CB...He makes such different films! Most fantasy, or not? Of course it would have been great if he really directed CB for a mere material reason: the great advertising and publicity (is it the right word in the right context?) the film'd have had! And money and so on! The same as if the actors were De Niro and N.Kidman!
The reason of the great success of Amadeus perhaps lies in the celebrity and level of Forman. If only Scorsese directed it...a masterchief as Kundun...we would'nt be here moaning about it all.

[Hofrat]

Posted on Fri, Mar. 09, 2007



`Copying Beethoven' lacking in originality
Lush fictional portrait looks like other movies featuring musical genius
By David Patrick Stearns
Philadelphia Inquirer

Oh, no! Not another mad-musical-genius film! You'd think that all those Glenn Gould films saturated the market for that sort of thing. But no.

Along comes Copying Beethoven, which may not be of huge interest to hardcore classical types who are likely to quibble with historical details, but is a film that may have aspirational appeal to less indoctrinated audiences who want to feel closer to one of Western civilization's great geniuses, but haven't done time with his string quartets.

This film's allure includes glossy production values, an alternately dreamy and realistic view of 19th-century Vienna, a script that doesn't talk down and Ed Harris gunning for an Oscar with a bravura portrayal of Ludwig van Beethoven.

If those ingredients sound as though the film has much in common with Amadeus, it does.

By its very nature, though, Copying Beethoven is a more circumscribed story that zeros in on the composer's final years when, because of eccentricity, deafness and monomaniacal devotion to music, he became a semirecluse. The smaller-than-Amadeus gallery of characters includes little more than Beethoven's drinking buddy, publisher, money-stealing nephew and, most of all, the fictional Anna Holtz, a 23-year-old aspiring composer who is bucking sexism by copying Beethoven's newest works.

Though her character carries only middling interest, her dramatic function is fairly essential: She provides needed visual relief amid the composer's sordid environs (even if the film makes her plainer as she becomes more of an artist), and, as one who lives in a convent, is the plot-driving newcomer to whom situations must be explained. Her relationship with Beethoven gives shape to a story that would otherwise be a fitful chronicle of successes (his Symphony No. 9) and disasters (the Grosse Fuge).

But what makes this film float -- if at times, just barely -- is the characterization of Beethoven by Harris and the Christopher Wilkinson script. Beethoven is sort of Mr. Hyde lacking a Dr. Jekyll, but with a godlike sense of entitlement, the manners of a grizzly bear and insights of a genius.

His first entrance is heralded by his publisher referring to him as ``the beast'' who has made his life so miserable that ``cancer is a gift.'' Beethoven himself is a Zen master who is likely to club his students to death and stomps around proclaiming that loneliness is his religion. He copes with his deafness with contraptions ranging from an ear trumpet attached to his head to huge collars to focus sound.

To his great credit, Harris has given much thought to the characterization of someone who is completely unconcerned with his exterior presentation, who so firmly believes in himself that his thoughts come out unedited but is still aware of the impact he has on those around him. He makes Beethoven thoroughly real, reminding me of Leonard Bernstein in his final year. Director Agnieszka Holland conveys the claustrophobia of being alone in the room with a genius of such magnitude that you feel crushed against the walls -- often adding up to some rather memorable scenes.

As for Anna Holtz, Diane Kruger is such an appealing presence, you don't think about her character's lack of plausibility until later. Just for the record, if she truly wanted to express her compositional gift, she would have done better to stick to the convent, where, at least in Italy, women frequently wrote excellent devotional music for one another with only occasional wrist-slapping from the archbishop.

[bfanatic]

The film Copying Beethoven was released in Budapest in 8. of March. At last!
I have already seen it two times. I really liked it in spite of some veakness.
I cannot understand the sour-faced, squeasy critics. Go to see the film and make your own opinion.

/I have not wrote for a while and I could not enter to the forum. My username was accepted but my password didn't. Thus I had to ask a new password./

Greeting from Budapest.