Copying Beethoven

Synopsis: A fictionalized account of Beethoven's last years and his relationship with Anna Holz, a music copyist.

The only other film I know by director Agnieszka Holland is the conventionally glossy and rather superficial WWII drama, Europa Europa (1991).  Her interpretation of Stephen J. Rivele and Christopher Wilkinson's revisionist re-imagining of the final years of Ludwig van Beethoven (Ed Harris) certainly adheres to this style, particularly in the casting of the winsome Diane Kruger as Anna Holz, a 23-year-old music student who becomes the maestro's copyist and eventually, muse of sorts. On the upside for what is essentially an American production this is considerably better than would have been the case had an American director been chosen. Holland, with the assistance of Caroline Amies' flawless production design, gives us a reassuringly attractive-looking film with Harris surprisingly effective as the iconic genius.

I gather that there is no factual truth in the story and this understandably may irritate Beethoven lovers. For those such as myself, who neither know anything of the man's life nor are knowledgeable about his music, this is an interesting introduction to both aspects. Despite the fact that the composer is depicted as somewhat of a ratbag, formally Holland's film does not differ much from the standard "great man" biopic, great men being, as we know, as flawed as they are great. This means an essentially reverential even clichéd tone is given to the proceedings which is embodied in Ms Holz's devotion to Beethoven and in close-ups of awe-struck, tear-daubed faces as the genius knocks them dead with the premiere of his Ninth Symphony in Vienna (in reality the film was shot in Hungary) in 1824 in a sequence in which Ms Holland handles particularly well, skilfully summarizing the two hour long work in a few short minutes of screen time, although the device of burying Anna unseen in the orchestra so that the deaf "Louie" could emulate her conducting is more than a little stretch (and, in any case, she would have been perfectly visible to the audience in the balcony).

If the opening of the film with its strong feminist implications seems unduly ahistorical (had the term "mooning" achieved currency by then?) and the latter part tends to be rather insubstantial it is the middle part of the film in which the script explores the nature of art and creativity, ego and self-transcendence that is most interesting. Rivele and Wilkinson do this through the intensely sublimated relationship, part spiritual, part sexual, between Beethoven and Anna in what is essentially a Romanticist view of art (in one daring scene they re-cast the duo as a kind of Jesus and Mary Magdalene pairing) and make use of a third character, Anna's paramour (Matthew Goode), an engineer working on the design of a new bridge, to contrast them both with art of the mind rather than of the soul.

The film also gives us Ludwig's nephew Karl (Joe Anderson), a feckless young man whom we are supposed to accept that doting Uncle Ludwig misguidedly believes is gifted musician. What the point of this is narratively is not clear, initially seeming to promise a liaison with Anna but this presumption bears no fruit and he eventually evaporates into thin air. If there are problems like this, in general Holland's film has a good deal to recommend it and it is a pity that the film has been so extensively maligned critically, Harris's Beethoven excepted. For audiences interested in such things (creativity and the wellsprings of the self) Copying Beethoven is a decent addition to the biopic genre.

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