Cheap Copying Beethoven (DVD) (Agnieszka Holland) Price

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Customer Reviews of Copying Beethoven

Capturing creativity
If you watch this movie and know something about Beethoven's last years, you ask yourself, why would someone possibly want to alter reality in such a way. For many purists this fictionalization of Beethoven's character is very annoying. However, Agnieszka Holland found in this script by Stephen J. Rivele and Christopher Wilkinson a true inspiration to analyze these last fertile years. Anna Holz, the talented copyist that is sent to help the Maestro in the rush to issue the script for the first representation of the 9th Symphony, is actually a device utilized by the director to pose the questions that we would have asked if we had been there. She is the key to comprehension. Anna consents us to discover the significance of the change in key, the effect of a half note, the impact of deafness on composition of music, the value of the interval between the notes. Anna (played with great control and introspection by Diane Kruger) independently of her narrated life, her absent father, her nun aunt, her handsome and stolid fiancée actually is not a character, she does not live a life of her own outside her relationship with Beethoven and the feelings she inspires in the Maestro are purely intellectual. The dissimulated love story is naturally present and it probably reaches its apex right before the start of the choral during the representation of the 9th Symphony, but it is cold, mental, there is no physical passion whatsoever. There is a truly magic moment during which we see the faces of the female singers that are waiting for the cue to start singing. <
>Ed Harris' Beethoven has all flare and the defects we imagine and know of the genius. His interpretation of brutality toward others and weakness towards his nephew is magistral, but he seems not to have a relationship with Anna. He sees her as an angel, a gift of God, a warning that death is near, an opportunity to think that his genius is understood and will live on. She is a sign of Fate or Destiny maybe? <
>As in all Holland's movies the cinematography is beautiful and reconstruction of period costumes is perfect. The use of candlelight, and ink, and food renders exactly the right atmosphere. <
>Once suspended disbelief, this intellectual reconstruction of Beethoven's creativity of the last years is fascinating and a pleasure to see and the temptation to believe its true is really there. <
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Beethoven and the Beatles...
Same kind of genius! After watching the movie, you want to listen to the whole collection of Beethoven music... Ed Harris is terrific. I discovered Diane Kruger who is a very good actress...

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Copying or Correcting?
This is a difficult movie to rate for me because I'm a huge fan of Beethoven's music and I have researched his life and compositions extensively. First, it certainly is worth viewing just because it's about Beethoven but there are a number of scenes that will leave the purists hurling objects at the screen. I mean someone, anyone, correcting Beethoven's music! There's a thunderclap! Beethoven's music has a frugality of content that belies the rich sounds and metaphors it invokes. It contains a sort of musical minimalism and structural form that retains only that which is absolutely necessary. His music is generally made from molecular bits of sound, carefully crafted and shaped to yield an incredible tapestry of sound with tremendous structural unity. <
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>With this in mind, when Anna Holtz corrected the Ninth, I nearly fell off my chair (well, when she showed up as his assistant I was already mystified). Beethoven would've tore her to pieces if she had dared question a note much less correct him. He did not take any meddling in his music kindly; even things as trivial as a listener's lack of attention would enrage him. <
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>The scene with Anna Holtz helping Beethoven conduct the Ninth was not nearly as painful though it was utterly fictional. It helped in terms of an emotional underpinning for the movie. In reality, Beethoven was still conducting when the orchestra had finished performing since he could not tell they had finished (his hearing loss was nearly complete at this point). <
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>The movie does convey his contempt for flattery, his epic rudeness and his radical departure from the norms of composition during his time. On the whole, I really liked the performances of the cast and, undoubtedly, the tremendous music. On balance, definitely worth a spin though not without gaping flaws and glaring historical inaccuracies.