THE RED VIOLIN
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Capsule: More intricately plotted than the
viewer at first expects, THE RED VIOLIN tells the
history in episodes of a (fictional) legendary
violin. This is a film that gets better as it goes
along and presents the viewer with several
interesting puzzles. The classical music that goes
with the story is a definite plus. Rating: 8 (0 to
10), high +2 (-4 to +4)
There are several different ways to write an anthology film, a film made up of several episodes. Some films manage to have the whole be greater than the sum of the parts. One that does rise well above the parts is this history of the Red Violin, a violin of astounding acoustical properties. Francois Girard, who directed, co-authored the screenplay with Don McKellar, who appears as a scientific violin expert. The two Canadian filmmakers previously worked together on THIRTY-TWO SHORT FILMS ABOUT GLENN GOULD. While it is not true that each episode stands on its own as a good story, the combined film is actually quite well-written. The story is set at the Montreal auction of the violin and then flashes back over the history of the violin and its travels from Italy to Montreal.
ITALY: We have the greatest violinmaker of his day Nicolo Bussotti (played by Carlo Cecchi) of Cremona, Italy, creating a masterpiece of a violin to coincide with the birth of his first child. ITALY and AUSTRIA: A young boy Kaspar Weiss (Christoph Koncz) with a Mozart-like brilliance for music is taken from his home in Northern Italy and taken to Vienna where he will find that his greatest impediments are not in competition but in himself. AUSTRIA and ENGLAND: A band of gypsies plays the great violin for years without ever knowing its true value. ENGLAND: The Red Violin inspires a scoundrel (Jason Flemyng as Frederick Pope) to make great music, but Pope does not realize how dependent on it he becomes. CHINA: The political orthodoxy of the Cultural Revolution teaches a cadre the price of fanaticism and forces her to choose between love of the violin and her loyalty to the fanatic new brand of politics sweeping China. MONTREAL: An auction house prepares for a public sale of musical instruments acquired from the Chinese government.
Contrary to expectation the film is at its most interesting when it gets to the 20th Century. We have seen other films like THE BLUE KITE tell us how China allowed political fanaticism to impoverish and destroy the country, but this film makes the same point much more succinctly and at the same time plaintively. In the Montreal segment we get a tantalizing look at 20th century analysis of a 17th century musical instrument, from acoustics to chemical and even biological analysis. In addition the final segment answers several previously unanswered questions and fits some apparently disconnected pieces together. We get a much better understanding of the Red Violin, what makes it unique, and why is it red?
Don McKellar seems to be becoming as ubiquitous in Canadian film as Denholm Elliot used to be in British film. At the 1998 Toronto International Film Festival (where I could not get into THE RED VIOLIN) he seemed to be associated with one film after another. Here he writes, directs, and acts. Top billing goes to Samuel L. Jackson, whose role does not become important until the final segment of the film. There are few familiar actors to stretch the budget, but there is some nice location scenery. But what is really enjoyable, as one might suspect in a film about a great violin, is that the film has some really excellent violin music.
In short, people who are pleased with the current vogue to have arthouse films on the theme of behind the scenes looks at how classical music gets created, films like SHINE and HILARY AND JACKIE, films with potent samples of good music, should find THE RED VIOLIN an entertaining entry. I give it an 8 on the 0 to 10 scale and a high +2 on the -4 to +4 scale. (Historical note: all characters, musical instruments, and events are fictional.)
Mark R. Leeper
mleeper@lucent.com
Copyright 1999 Mark R. Leeper
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews