Starring: Ed Harris, Diane Kruger and Matthew Goode
Director: Agnieska Holland
Rated: PG
TWO of the best films about great composers are Milos Forman’s award-winning Amadeus, and Tony Palmer’s Testimony, which explores the music of Shostakovich. Copying Beethoven, directed by Polish-born filmmaker Agnieszka Holland (Angry Harvest, Europa Europa), is not in this league. But through Ed Harris’ inspired impersonation of Ludwig van Beethoven, Copying Beethoven gives insight into the composer’s Ninth Symphony and Grosse Fugue, as well as his Herculean struggle against deafness and loneliness.
Set in Bonn in 1824, Diane Kruger (Troy, Joyeux Noël) plays Anne Holz, a young conservatory student who is sent by her ailing employer, the music publisher Wenzel Schlemmer (Ralph Riach), to copy into manuscript form Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, which the composer is racing to finish for its first scheduled performance.
Beethoven’s initial reaction to being sent a woman copyist is to be characteristically overbearing, and brutally rude. His response to her telling him that she, too, wants to compose, is the immediate rejoinder: ‘A woman composer is like a dog walking on its hind legs; it’s never done well, but one is surprised to see it done at all!’.
But despite being intimidated by him and mesmerised by his genius, Anna learns to temper her compassion for his deafness with a refusal to accept disparagement from him. In time, Anna shows a profound understanding of his music, to the extent that she corrects an error in the music that he has made himself, with the result that Beethoven becomes increasingly dependant on her as a vital link in communicating his music to the world.
Beethoven’s music is the orchestral thread running through Copying Beethoven, which is comprised of many beautiful images, and some interesting characters who give insight into the times. These include Beethoven’s workaday friends with whom he drinks at a local tavern, his nephew Karl van Beethoven (Joe Anderson), who is driven to deceit by his uncle’s love and expectations, and fellow lodgers in Beethoven’s rooming house, who range from those enraged by the noise he makes, to an old woman who understands the greatness of what she hears.
Copying Beethoven is at its best when conveying the anguish suffered by Beethoven at the loss of his hearing, and how the composer is driven by the force of daemonic creativity to express in musical notation the music he hears ceaselessly in his head. Most moving is the first performance of Beethoven’s Ninth (played almost in its entirety) which Beethoven conducts himself, but only with the support of Anna in the pit, whose movements he follows.
There are, however, aspects that jar. Copying Beethoven’s central premise is the composer’s deafness, the anguish it caused him, and how it isolated him from normal discourse. There is a moment at the conclusion of the Ninth Symphony, when we are in Beethoven’s head, and no sound can be heard, only an image of the audience’s ecstatic response. Yet Beethoven is shown throughout the film having complicated discussions with Anna, with nothing more necessary for understanding what she says than the perfunctory cupping of a hand to his ear.
These reservations aside, Copying Beethoven is memorable for Harris’ impassioned, sympathetic portrayal of the composer, who he strikingly resembles. Harris is an actor of rare talent (Paris Trout, The Hours, Pollack), and for those interested in learning more about the man and his music, there is much to be gained in this generally well-made biopic.
