'Copying Beethoven'

[Joy]

The movie is playing again this weekend in Scottsdale but a different movie house, so it looks like I'll be going again too!

Any word yet on if the movie is going to be distributed more widely?

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[This message has been edited by Joy (edited 11-17-2006).]

[terry]

Answrs: to Hollywood: the movie can't come to Europe now, it's too early.I found on one site (I don't remember well, perhaps yahoo.com or filmjournal.com the next distribution houses (is this the right name?) and there is Italy also! So surely Austria, too.
To preston: sorry for the misunderstanding, I meant I CAN'T view it now (not I WON'T which has a different meaning) bc I'm not in USA so you only can view it, I'm so Jealouuus just as Hollywod!
Mr Srivele: I know about B's humour, I read all his letters and convers. book and wrote a thesis on them. I'm just afraid of people who don't know anything about his personality,they could misunderstand...well I already said something like this. I am happy about the success, of course, I hope it will last long.

[terry]

Answrs: to Hollywood: the movie can't come to Europe now, it's too early.I found on one site (I don't remember well, perhaps yahoo.com or filmjournal.com the next distribution houses (is this the right name?) and there is Italy also! So surely Austria, too.
To preston: sorry for the misunderstanding, I meant I CAN'T view it now (not I WON'T which has a different meaning) bc I'm not in USA so you only can view it, I'm so Jealouuus just as Hollywod!
Mr Srivele: I know about B's humour, I read all his letters and convers. book and wrote a thesis on them. I'm just afraid of people who don't know anything about his personality,they could misunderstand...well I already said something like this. I am happy about the success, of course, I hope it will last long.

[MusicallyInclined]

I am a total idiot.

Here I am thinking, "how are you going to see this movie" when it's clearly playing in DC and I live right by a metero station.

Doh!

Also, glowing review from the washingtonpost (if it hasn't been posted):
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...111601636.html

[sjwenger]

The Bethesda Metro station isn't very far from the Landmark Bethesda Row.

I saw the movie again today, and loved it even more the second time. I wasn't as focussed on what was going to happen next, so I was able to just immerse myself in the moment. Lovely, lovely movie. Now I'm eager to get the video.

I don't think I'll want the soundtrack, unless it will have the complete pieces from the movie, not just the segments that were played.

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[sjwenger]

There's hope for everyone who wants to see the movie. The list of theaters that was released at this groupsite was incomplete. I see that Copying Beethoven is playing at three theaters in the Washington DC area, although only one was listed on the initial release advertisement. So check your area theaters!

I saw it today. I couldn't say that it was sold out or crowded, but for a Friday afternoon 2 pm showing when most people are at work or in school, there were about 25 people at the Landmark Bethesda showing.

- Susan

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To learn about "The Port-Wine Sea," my parody of Patrick O'Brian's wonderful Aubrey-Maturin series, please contact me at
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To learn about "The Better Baby" book, ways to increase a baby's intelligence, health, and potentials, please use the same address.

[Chris]

Well, I have just returned from the 7:20 show at Bethesda Row.

*SPOILERS BELOW*

I loved the film. I though Harris' performance was excellent. The sequences of the Ninth and the Grosse Fugue were wonderful, as was Beethoven dictating his last music from his bed. I also loved the scene of him destroying the model bridge, even though I don't think that is something he would have actually done. I just remember thinking, "Wow, that bridge is horrible" when it was uncovered, and I was glad to see Beethoven put it in its place Ha ha!

The 7:20 show was packed and many people applauded at the end of the film.

[sjwenger]

I loved the same scenes that Chris mentioned.

What was the piece he was composing at the end of the movie from his bed? What was the music played during the closing credits?

------------------
To learn about "The Port-Wine Sea," my parody of Patrick O'Brian's wonderful Aubrey-Maturin series, please contact me at
susanwenger@yahoo.com

To learn about "The Better Baby" book, ways to increase a baby's intelligence, health, and potentials, please use the same address.

[Joy]

Originally posted by sjwenger:
I loved the same scenes that Chris mentioned.

What was the piece he was composing at the end of the movie from his bed? What was the music played during the closing credits?

I loved these scenes as well also of Beethoven walking through the woods. I could have had more of that scene but my favourite and the one I will remember as being so tender and beautiful is Beethoven in his bed composing. I likened that scene to an analogy of him talking about 'death' and not just his composition. Did anyone else get this point of view from that scene?

I may be wrong but was that his 10th symphony he was working on while in bed, I didn't quite catch it at the end and also I believe in the credits there was a montage but the 9th certainly stood out.



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[srivele]

Originally posted by Joy:
I loved these scenes as well also of Beethoven walking through the woods. I could have had more of that scene but my favourite and the one I will remember as being so tender and beautiful is Beethoven in his bed composing. I likened that scene to an analogy of him talking about 'death' and not just his composition. Did anyone else get this point of view from that scene?

I may be wrong but was that his 10th symphony he was working on while in bed, I didn't quite catch it at the end and also I believe in the credits there was a montage but the 9th certainly stood out.

The piece he was working on in bed was the hymn of thanksgiving from the Op. 132 string quartet, one of the most beautifully moving and touching themes he ever wrote, I think. In the credits, I recall the 9th of course, as well as the 'jazz' variation from the second movement of the last piano sonata. I will have to check the music scoring sheets to find out what else there was.

[srivele]

Here is the Washington Post review from yesterday, the 17th November:

Oh, the Joy of 'Beethoven'

By Stephen Hunter
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, November 17, 2006; Page C04

The problem with great men, of course, is that although they are great,
they are still men.

In Agnieszka Holland's hugely enjoyable "Copying Beethoven," the great
composer is portrayed as a goat in winter: manipulative, petty, crabby,
self-indulgent, deluded, arrogant, disreputable. But the film never
forgets -- nor does he, nor does he let anyone around him forget-- that he
is great.

[Ed Harris as the incorrigible genius and Diane Kruger as the
fictional assistant who helps him achieve immortality.]

The idea behind the picture is charming. Suppose, it posits, in the last
three years of his life, as his symptoms (syphilis or lead poisoning, take
your choice) increased, Beethoven came to rely on a young woman. Hired
originally as a copyist (she takes his badly scrawled musical manuscripts
and transforms them diligently into coherent and playable scores), she
ultimately enters into a kind of liberating creative bond with him.

She, though frustrated by his rants and his rages and engaged in a private
life of her own, nevertheless becomes his amanuensis as well as confessor,
would-be daughter and deathbed companion. In a strange way, the movie's
almost the opposite of Peter Shaffer's "Amadeus," which, also set in the
music world of the classical era, showed someone so crippled by envy of
greatness, he decided to destroy it; "Copying Beethoven" shows someone so
liberated by greatness, she decided to enable it.

The central issue of the composer's declining years, when Ludwig (Ed
Harris) and Anna (Diane Kruger) became pals, is that damned Ninth
Symphony, the composer's last, upon which he labored for almost 10 years
and which, when premiered, shocked the world for its very late addition of
a chorale in the final movement. The singers stood silent for the first
two hours of the thing so when they finally opened their mouths, they were
really on the spot to deliver. They did: "The Ode to Joy."

That's the film's best sustained sequence, as the irascible, extremely
annoying old beast makes life hell, and good-hearted, virginal but
musically sophisticated Anna keeps him on course, becoming secretary,
maid, social director and almost manager or agent. It's completely
fictitious, of course. But it's nevertheless a fascinating peek into the
culture of greatness, the turbulence that titanic talents leave in their
wakes, as other people scurry to pick up the pieces.

Even as foursquare an American as Ed Harris is (he once played John Glenn,
for cryin' out loud!), he brings the old fella to intensive life. The
movie simply would not work if it sentimentalized him, nor would it work
if it demonized him. Its genius is finding ways to suggest that no matter
how much of a gargoyle Beethoven became, he retained his humanity, his
faith, his ability to feel. He could rage, rage against the dying of the
light, but he could still fall into a kind of innocent boyhood crush on
someone as pure and beautiful as Anna. Another title for the film might
have been "Ludwig in Love."

As good as Harris is, however, the true star of the film is Kruger. When
she first appeared in an English-language film ("Troy," as Helen) four
years ago, you thought two things nearly simultaneously: What a babe! and
Zzzzzzzz. That's what she seemed like then: beautiful actress (possibly
one of the world's most beautiful) and, like so many other fabled movie
beauties, somewhat inert.

But that first impression was criminally misleading. In fact, as she soon
proved in films as diverse as "Wicker Park," "National Treasure" and
"Joyeux Noel," she was genuinely gifted. She was one of those rare
actresses who can embody virtue without seeming prissy. Her eyes, which
lit up the covers of Vogue and other fashion books during her modeling
days, weren't just big and beautiful but extremely expressive.

All of this leads to "Copying Beethoven's" best sequence, really one of
the best sequences of the year, which is its dramatization of the premiere
of the Ninth under Der Meister's own baton, on May 7, 1824, in Vienna.
It's one of the fabled Beethoven moments: When he was done, he had no idea
of the reception because he was deaf. One of the singers came up to the
podium and gently turned the old man around to face -- pandemonium. The
crowning moment to his genius. Cantankerous though he was known to be, he
cried. Five ovations. Hats in the air.

It may even be true. However what is not true but what is touching
nevertheless is Holland's re-creation of it, off a script by Stephen J.
Rivele and Christopher Wilkinson. In this version, Beethoven is so deaf
and distraught and under such pressure that it appears he'll be unable to
conduct. Anna volunteers to slide into the pit, somewhere between violins
and brass, and as she knows the music so well, to conduct him; he will in
turns ape her movements and conduct them.

Holland delivers the full climactic movement, cutting between the
frightened, lost but trusting old man and the young girl who so admires
him that the chance to share the moment with him turns her almost
translucent with passionate beauty. Beethoven was beyond love at that
moment, but I sure wasn't.

In any event, after that triumph, the film still has a bit to run, as it
covers Anna's breakup with the boyfriend (an untalented architect who
resents her increasing adoration of the geezer-genius) and Beethoven's
final spurt of creativity as expressed in his last five string quartets
and the last five piano sonatas, which, in an effort to avoid
self-duplication, he turned almost avant-garde. They were not appreciated,
but as a post-movie title board indicates, they were so musically
innovative they would influence composers for the next 175 years.

Filmed in Hungary in English, the production is lush and convincing. It
humanizes Ludwig from that frosty image of distant Teutonic genius to a
recognizable portrait of a vain, dying but brilliant man; it will earn
Diane Kruger a whole new range of admirers. It's completely beguiling and
it delivers joy, the beautiful spark of the gods.

[srivele]

Originally posted by Peter:
Nice idea but the practicalities are a little daunting, unless you all come over to West Sussex, England!

I'm game. Anybody else?

[sjwenger]

You must travel a great deal in your work. If you get to the Washington DC or Baltimore area, Win and I would love to attend.
- Susan

------------------
To learn about "The Port-Wine Sea," my parody of Patrick O'Brian's wonderful Aubrey-Maturin series, please contact me at
susanwenger@yahoo.com

To learn about "The Better Baby" book, ways to increase a baby's intelligence, health, and potentials, please use the same address.

[Joy]

I'm game too!

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[Joy]

Originally posted by srivele:

The piece he was working on in bed was the hymn of thanksgiving from the Op. 132 string quartet, one of the most beautifully moving and touching themes he ever wrote, I think. In the credits, I recall the 9th of course, as well as the 'jazz' variation from the second movement of the last piano sonata. I will have to check the music scoring sheets to find out what else there was.

Thanks, well, it was certainly a beautiful scene and brought tears. Wonderful review also! There's been some wonderful reviews in our paper as well and the movie is still being run in Scottsdale.



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