Copying Beethoven

Allow me to divert a little from the lovefest that is my movie blog right now, to a movie i loathed with the intensity of a thousand burning desert suns.

Copying Beethoven.

One would think that this film had several things going for it. Ed Harris, Beethoven's 9th, Beethoven himself, the period in Germany, Germany itself etc etc. With a character like Beethoven to work with - a deaf composer for God's sake! - you'd think this film would be a meaty tribute to a fantastic composer. Not so.

From this minute this film started up, with German characters making no attempt at any accents other than American, I knew that I was going to tell Rosie who had free tickets, to spend her time watching something else. For some reason unbeknownst to me, the makers had decided that Beethoven's young, innane female copyist was more interesting than him. That her seeming power over a genius was going to please an audience, and that her simpering would come across as strong, yet feminine. Not so.

The performances themselves were terrible, but in the defence of the actors, they had nothing to work with. The dialogue was abysimal - cliche after cliche after cliche is offensive coming out of the mouth of any character, let alone the mouth of Ed Harris playing Beethoven. The costumes were laughably amateur, the staging was poor, and even Beethoven's deafness was inconsistent - he needed his copyist to beat for him to follow in the debut of the 9th, but could hear his own quartet being played at the end?

The one shining point of this movie was the music. But it was Beethoven, it would be a little difficult to stuff it up. Although come to think of it, during the 10 minutes or so when we were treated to the best bits of the 9th Symphony, we did have to watch the bloody copyist with her stilted performance, beating out the time to Ed Harris.

Ugh. Don't waste your braincells on this one.

3 out of 10.