A subtle, intelligent picture with a suitably resonant title,...
---P. French, The Guardian.
How to write about music? How to film it? Is there a decent film that really gets to what music is about? If there is, then this wasn't it.
Let's start with the subtle bit. This is a crass, cliche-ridden, trivial and grossly childish film. At times you wondered if it wasn't a parody. Keep on mentioning the Op. 131 enough to convince yourself that you're cultured, with delightfully refined sensibilities. You're clearly a league above the rest of the poor sods in hicksville.
It's not just the wooden performances that grate; it's the fact that the roles assigned to each character are what one might expect from a person with an accounting-mindset, someone who is keenly aware of which formulas will strike the right notes for the upper middle classes: list the character traits of musicians you think will resonate with (or at least be understood by) popular culture. Keep it basic, don't allow any complexity to rear its ugly head. Tick the boxes. The cool, heartless foreigner; the melancholic dark-haired woman; the childish, bumbling fat man ("let's play it by heart"). All very fine and well, but why bring in the music to this story? This could have been the story of any group of four unintelligent people.
A brief affair with a tasty Spanish Flamenco dancer (who is, of course, up for a passionate one-night stand or more because she's introduced to Bartok). If only! (I hear some readers say).
As an aside: why must there be the obligatory sex scene? I don't know how the film ends but if Hoffman had any sense he'd quit the quartet and the Op. 131 and hook up with Passionate-Spanish-Woman. After all, didn't T.S. Eliot say...
And the cliches keep raining down. He explains to his wife that he is "sorry" for this one, grave mistake in a bit of hammy acting that is unsurpassed throughout this quite dire film- which is saying a lot. Then he asks, like a whimpering fool, "do you love me?" To which she replies: "I don't know".
It seems like no-one really knows anything in this film. Seriously, why bother?
At this stage I gave up, my patience stretched to the limit. One hour of absolute shite when I could have been watching the Arsenal.
"A suitably resonant title"? No kidding, bro'!
French also wrote a review of the appallingly fake film about life in a monastery.
He writes: 'Of Gods and Men is a profound, immaculately acted movie. Its words are carefully considered, its images eloquent. The subject matter is urgently topical, the themes raised eternal and universal'.
To which one must reply: nonsense on stilts!
---P. French, The Guardian.
How to write about music? How to film it? Is there a decent film that really gets to what music is about? If there is, then this wasn't it.
Let's start with the subtle bit. This is a crass, cliche-ridden, trivial and grossly childish film. At times you wondered if it wasn't a parody. Keep on mentioning the Op. 131 enough to convince yourself that you're cultured, with delightfully refined sensibilities. You're clearly a league above the rest of the poor sods in hicksville.
It's not just the wooden performances that grate; it's the fact that the roles assigned to each character are what one might expect from a person with an accounting-mindset, someone who is keenly aware of which formulas will strike the right notes for the upper middle classes: list the character traits of musicians you think will resonate with (or at least be understood by) popular culture. Keep it basic, don't allow any complexity to rear its ugly head. Tick the boxes. The cool, heartless foreigner; the melancholic dark-haired woman; the childish, bumbling fat man ("let's play it by heart"). All very fine and well, but why bring in the music to this story? This could have been the story of any group of four unintelligent people.
A brief affair with a tasty Spanish Flamenco dancer (who is, of course, up for a passionate one-night stand or more because she's introduced to Bartok). If only! (I hear some readers say).
As an aside: why must there be the obligatory sex scene? I don't know how the film ends but if Hoffman had any sense he'd quit the quartet and the Op. 131 and hook up with Passionate-Spanish-Woman. After all, didn't T.S. Eliot say...
And the cliches keep raining down. He explains to his wife that he is "sorry" for this one, grave mistake in a bit of hammy acting that is unsurpassed throughout this quite dire film- which is saying a lot. Then he asks, like a whimpering fool, "do you love me?" To which she replies: "I don't know".
It seems like no-one really knows anything in this film. Seriously, why bother?
At this stage I gave up, my patience stretched to the limit. One hour of absolute shite when I could have been watching the Arsenal.
"A suitably resonant title"? No kidding, bro'!
French also wrote a review of the appallingly fake film about life in a monastery.
He writes: 'Of Gods and Men is a profound, immaculately acted movie. Its words are carefully considered, its images eloquent. The subject matter is urgently topical, the themes raised eternal and universal'.
To which one must reply: nonsense on stilts!
