Review of Copying Beethoven (2006)

In October of 1955, Charles Schulz did a series of "Peanuts" strips dealing with Schroeder and Beethoven's 9th Symphony.Schroeder listens to it in an overcoat because the first movement was so beautiful it gave him chills.The October 27th strip has Charlie Brown reading to Schroeder how: "At the conclusion of the symphony the audience stood up and cheered.Beethoven, however, because of his deafness could not hear them, and because his back was to the audience could not see them.With Tears in her eyes one of the singers led Beethoven to the edge of the stage where he could see the cheering people."At this point Schroeder buries his face in his hands and emits a heartbroken "SOB."

There are many stories about that first performance, and while no one knows for sure what has the most credence is that Beethoven wanted to conduct his work, but his deafness made it impossible, so Michael Umlauf, the Kapellmeister of the Kärntnertortheater in Vienna conducted the orchestera.Beethoven was behind him on the stage, giving the tempos at the beginning of each movement and beating the time.The orchestra had been instructed to ignore the composer and when the symphony was over Beethoven was still beating time and turning pages of the score.That was when the contralto Caroline Unger walked over and turned Beethoven around to see the cheering audience, who were raising their hands and throwing things into the air to make up for the fact the man they were cheering could not hear their ovation.

"Copying Beethoven" looks at the last years of the life of Ludwig van Beethoven (Ed Harris) and writers Stephen J. Rivele and Christopher Wilkinson, who did the screenplays for the biopics of "Ali" and "Nixon" (and are currently working on a film about Jackie Robinson), create the fictional character of Anna Holtz (Diane Kruger), a young woman who is sent to the apartment of the maestro to turn his original pages for the score of the 9th Symphony into something that can actually be read and printed for the orchestra.At the premier performance of the work the composer will indeed conduct the work himself, but with Anna working as his ears to give him the proper tempos, and it will be Anna who will turn Beethoven around so that he can see the applause.

What will surprise you is that this film's interpretation of this memorable moment comes not at the end of "Copying Beethoven," but about an hour into this 2006 film.It is the highpoint of the film and then the story continues for another half hour, with decidedly less impressive results.My favorite scene actually comes early in the film, when Anna is trying to explain that she is indeed the copyist who has been sent to turn his original pages for the score of the 9th Symphony into something that can actually be read and printed for the orchestra.It is in its own small wall the counterpart to the scene at the end of "Amadeus" when Mozart is explaining to Saliari how the pieces of "De Profundus" fit together in his "Mass."Beethoven finds an "error," and in her explanation we have our proof that Anna knows what she is doing and a glimpse into the technical nature of Beethoven's genius.But far too often director Agnieszka Holland ("Europa Europa") focuses on Anna instead of the maestro.

Ultimately, "Copying Beethoven" is too caught up in the character of Anna.What could have been a nice conceit, giving the maestro someone to talk to about living with deafness and to articulate what he was doing to change the world of music, is turned into a proto-feminist figure who wants to make her own mark as a composer.As he turned deaf Beethoven started keeping conversation diaries, a rich source of the composer's thoughts regarding his music, so there are original source material to be mined for gems similar to what we get a glimpse of early in the film.Instead, we waste time on Anna's struggle to write music, a plotline that really has no where to go and which ends up being enveloped in the idea that the Beethoven's last works so radical and so far ahead of their time that they could not be comprehended by the audiences of the Romantic Ear.

I have to say that the actual performance of the 9th is far too short for my taste and the emphasis becomes not so much the music as it is the place where it takes both Beethoven and Anna (ironically, while he is conducting without ears as it were, she keeps closing her eyes as she becomes enraptured).There is a problem in that the way the situation is set up you are inclined to think that they are skating on the edge of disaster and that either one of them could make a horrible mistake.This tends to take away from the music and at least there are a few shots of members of the audience moved by the realization that this deaf old man, who had not premiered a symphony for a dozen years, was unleashing a work of monumental greatness.

"Copying Beethoven" also suffers in comparison to "Immortal Beloved", the 1994 film about the composer that had the virtue of framing Beethoven's life in the quest to uncover the mystery woman in his life.But watching Harris play Beethoven conducting his symphony is pretty captivating and throughout this movie there is always Beethoven's music, so there is ample grounds to round up on this film.Finally, if the main effect of this film is that you go out and listen to the 9th Symphony from start to finish, which is exactly what I did, then you would be ahead of the game.

Product Description
When young Anna Holz (Diane Kruger), a Viennese music student is asked to transcribe scoring notes for the great Ludwig van Beethoven (Harris), she eagerly accepts, despite warnings about his volatile behavior. Part maestro, part mentor and part madman, Beethoven reluctantly relies on Anna to help him realize the culmination of his art.

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