Film Reviews

Copying Beethoven

• Rating:
• Director: Agnieszka Holland
• Starring: Diane Kruger
• Details: US / Germany / Hungary / 104mins (12A).

What an apt title Copying Beethoven is, but a better one would have been "Robbing Amadeus's Grave", such is the similarity with Milos Forman's 1984 epic. Director Holland unashamedly lifts the climatic dictation scene wholesale, lines like 'God put music in my mind and then made me deaf,' mirror Salieri's 'God gave me that desire and then made me mute', and even Harris's obnoxious composer rings of Tom Hulce's Mozart. Seen through the eyes of his attractive copyist Anna Holtz (Kruger), Copying Beethoven documents the last months of the composer's life as he struggles to change the way music is written. Harris is a great actor, one of those that guarantee the viewer a strong performance in a decent film, but Beethoven is the wrong role for him and although he does his best, he's clunky in a way we haven't seen from him before. Writers Rivele and Wilkinson seem to struggle with bio-pics, as their previous attempts - Nixon and Ali - came across as stale and empty. Here, the emphasis is not on Beethoven's struggle to write music despite his debilitating deafness, but on his attempts to change structure in music. Messing around with structure is a common theme as the premiere Of Ode To Joy, which should have been the climatic showstopper, happens about two-thirds of the way through, and nothing much happens afterwards. Okay, so the movie isn't about Ode To Joy, but we're never given an insight to the great composer's struggle to change people's perception as to how music is written, and the ending is downplayed, fluffed and easily forgotten. There are dull, pointless sub- plots ahoy too, as Beethoven's financially-challenged nephew Karl hangs about for some reason, and why Anna's bridge-building boyfriend gets his own story is a mystery.

Review by Gavin Burke