IMMORTAL BELOVED
A film review by Scott Renshaw
Copyright 1995 Scott Renshaw
Starring: Gary Oldman, Jeroen Krabbe, Isabella Rossellini, Johanna Ter Steege, Valeria Golino. Screenplay/Director: Bernard Rose.
Every time a film based on actual events or including real historical figures appears, it seems that there are scholars stepping over each other to decry its lack of faithfulness to historical fact. Whether it's Shoeless Joe Jackson batting right handed in FIELD OF DREAMS, or the condensed time line in the recent QUIZ SHOW, or any of a hundred other possible examples, there seems to be a widespread refusal to allow film dramas to be exactly that: dramatizations of real events, no more documentary than the re-creations on "America's Most Wanted." IMMORTAL BELOVED is based on a footnote in the life of Ludwig von Beethoven, which will doubtless inspire Beethoven biographers to inveigh against its questionable scholarship. As a moviegoer, my only question is, "Does it succeed as drama?" The answer for IMMORTAL BELOVED is that while it is sometimes quite enjoyable, it is better experienced than analyzed.
IMMORTAL BELOVED opens in 1827, shortly after the death of Beethoven (Gary Oldman). In the course of tying up Beethoven's affairs, his personal secretary Anton Schindler (Jeroen Krabbe) discovers a final will leaving Beethoven's entire estate to a woman identified in a letter only as "my immortal beloved." Schindler sets out to discover the identity of the woman among the composer's many lovers, including Countess Giulietta Guicciardi (Valeria Golino) and Countess Anna Maria Erdody (Isabella Rossellini). Through their recollections, Beethoven's life and abrasive personality emerge in flashback, including his struggle to hide his deafness from the world and his bitter battle with his sister-in-law Johanna (Johanna Ter Steege) for the custody of his nephew.
Perhaps the best, if most precious, way to describe IMMORTAL BELOVED is as LUDWIG VON-ADEUS. Writer/director Rose has mounted a sumptuous production, gloriously scored with the subject's compositions and intended to bring some humanity to a figure most often seen as a wildly coiffed bust on a marble pedestal. And he manages to deliver some marvelous sequences: the sea of mourners greeting Beethoven's casket; his deafness revealed to an audience as he attempts to conduct an orchestra; the beautifully staged premiere of the 9th Symphony, as the "Ode to Joy" accompanies flashbacks to Beethoven's difficult childhood. Rose manages to wed sound to image in that manner that is uniquely cinematic, evocative without ever lapsing into pretentiousness.
As successful as IMMORTAL BELOVED is as a sensory experience, it is not nearly as successful at establishing character. For better or worse, AMADEUS managed to make Mozart a character we could relate to; IMMORTAL BELOVED does not quite manage that feat with Beethoven. He is always somewhat remote, even as we witness his struggle with disability and his volatile interpersonal relationships. Gary Oldman returns to earth from his whacked-out recent performances, and is quite good as the angry and isolated composer. But the fragmented nature of the narrative allows us only unsatisfying glimpses of the man Beethoven might have been, and even Rose's tendency to film Oldman in medium and long shots contributes to this distancing effect.
Rose's choice of the "immortal beloved" letter might have seemed perfect as a jumping off point for examining Beethoven as a character, but too often it just doesn't work. Part of the reason behind Schindler's near-obsessive pursuit of the identify of the woman in the letter is that he is fascinated by the object of such passion in this often hateful man, but Rose lets both us and Schindler down by leaving key relationships under-developed, particularly the relationship between Beethoven and the woman Rose selects as the real "immortal beloved." When the film stops dead for Schindler to talk to one woman or another about Beethoven, we expect some insight, and there just isn't all that much.
Though I have focused on many of IMMORTAL BELOVED's failings, I should make it clear that on the whole, I enjoyed it, particularly in the moment I was watching it. Music coordinator Georg Solti fills the theater with grand music, and those scenes which simply feature music accompanying Rose's images are quite powerful. But afterwards, I realized what that made IMMORTAL BELOVED: a somewhat ineffectual plot connecting some exceedingly well-made music videos.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 symphonies: 6.
-- Scott Renshaw Stanford University Office of the General Counsel
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