The Red Violin

Rating:
Summary: The Little Violin That Could!
Review: : Son of Michael Powell's 1948 The Red Shoes with a new coat of red paint

The Red Violin has trouble deciding whether it is a costume picture or an art movie. The film traces the history of a rare violin from its birthplace in 1681 Italy. The instrument is headed for a 1998 auction house to be sold. Enter expert Samuel L. Jackson. Jackson knows rare violins. He recognizes this piece as one of a kind. Its not a Stradivarius. Its even more refined, a handmade instrument from an old Italian craftsman. Jackson is not the only one who sees through the plain trappings of the violin. A young scientist who measures the richness of fiddle acoustics, is also onto the red violin. The young man is actor Keith Gordon the same young skeptic who doubts Rodney Dangerfield's attempts at getting an education in the 1986 film Back to School. The Red violin is so famous there are knock-offs and copies circulating in the rare violin marketplace.

As I mentioned, the first four historic scenarios through which the vintage violin travels are costume pieces. They are also choppy and differ in detail, authenticity and tone from the last auction house episode. On top of that the auction mystery is so richly separate in tone and character from other sequences, it is as if separate filmmakers were at work here.

One sequence features a Viennese landowner who retrieves the instrument from a band of gypsies who are trespassing on his property. The aristocrat is a true eccentric. The music he plays on the Red Violin is extraordinary. His love affair with absurd European Duchess Greta Schacchi is so unnecessary, the episode plays like farce.

Another episode takes us to China in the early 20th century then moves the daughter whose mother buys the pawned violin for her, to China's cultural revolution of the '60s. All old things are now considered reactionary. Violins are instruments which play "decadent western music." The young girl, now grown up, takes flight to save the instrument. This sequence echoes the ridiculous woodenness of the cultural revolution itself. Characters are reduced to counterrevolutionary sloganeering. Its difficult to believe even the Maoists of that period could have cared so much about an off-colored violin.

Scenes from the the first 17th century period when the instrument is made, explain its strange color.

The last sequence is a mystery. It pays off a story that has been difficult to follow. The auction sequences take place in a European Capital, though the actors appear to be Canadians. Fittingly, the actor who actually auctions this fiddle played the title character in Thirty Two Short Films about Glenn Gould. The 1998 auction sequence saves the whole film from being little more than a comic book. Most of the violin music played throughout the films is exquisite and interesting in its variety and range.

Samuel Jackson, Keith Gordon and the many others in the last sequence are superb. The last part redeems the entire film. The screenwriting is fine here as is the camerawork. The color photography, if I have failed to mention it, seems excessively red.

Rating:
Summary: One special violin and its place in history...
Review: This 1998 film traces the history of "The Red Violin" to an auction house in modern Montreal where Samuel L. Jackson is cast as a violin authentication expert and is putting the instrument through a number of tests. Through flashbacks and flash-forwards to the bidding process at the auction house, the viewer is treated to five different vignettes, in four different languages, each complete within themselves.

It starts in 17th century Italy when a violin craftsman creates this special instrument for his unborn child. His wife, who later dies in childbirth, visits a tarot card reader and the cards become a structure which follows the violin through the centuries. The audience then follows the violin to a young child prodigy in an Austrian monastery, a camp of gypsies, a British virtuoso, and then to China, where the violin is labeled a decadent western instrument and is almost destroyed during the cultural revolution. History sweeps by as we watch the violin in different times and places, but it is not until the very end that we finally discover the mystery of its color.

This film won an Academy Award for the best original musical score and although I'm not a fan of classical music, I enjoyed it completely. Every note seemed appropriate to its setting and showcased the talent of the composer, John Corigliano, as well as the musician, Joshua Bell. Most of all, it complimented the stories and never detracted from them.

Perhaps because each story was so brief, the characters just hinted at being developed fully. However, the film was less about the characters than it was about the violin, and, once understanding that, I could appreciate the film for what it was, as well as appreciate the history of the violin and its place in European classical music. And, somehow, the Canadian director, Francois Girard, who wrote the screenplay with Don McKellar, were skilled enough to put it all together in a very satisfying package.

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful movie, spectacular DVD
Review: This movie is very artistically crafted, and the DVD version reveals all the audio and video nuances of the performances spectacularly. The movie revolves around, obviously, a red violin. The viewer is taken seemlessly through a series of microdramas, connected both themeatically, and symbolically. From medieval Italy, to Austria, to Asia, and finally to the United States, the movie progresses. Juxtaposed upon these tragic microdramas are the Tarot Card Reader narrator, and the dramatic, but sterile auction of the violin. The violin has a tragic and mysterious history, and in its tragedy it allows others to transcend earthly performances. Each of the characters, from a frail boy to a machismo, narcissistic womanizer, become captivated by the violin's perfection. However, the violin, endows a curse upon those that indulge its nectar, and the characters become overwhelmed by the power it radiates. Incidently, it should be recognized that a violin is often recognized as the most "perfect" instrument being most able to duplicate the range of the human voice (to which our ears are preferentially tuned.) Unfortunately, Samuel Jackson's actions at the end of the movie are the least creative, and the most predictable of all the protagonists. The score is magnificant, and the violin performances captivating, cathartic and penetrating. Touche, a great flick. Worth watching again and again.

Rating:
Summary: HBO-SW
Review: We saw this movie on HBO-SW and just had to have the DVD for our library. A very compelling story; riveting. The costumes,actors,scenery,editing,music were superb!!One of the best movies that we have seen in over 60 years.

Rating:
Summary: Object of Desire
Review: Five stories spanning four centuries, across three continents revolve around one inanimate object, a blood red violin in Francois Girard's The Red Violin. An auction in the twentieth century where the violin of the title is the marquee item frames the film. The room is abuzz as the auctioneer (Colm Feore) introduces the much-ballyhooed instrument. There are several nervous faces in the crowd, each we gradually learn a descendant, in one way or another, of one of the people who had once owned the instrument. What does it mean to them? Why do they want it so much? How much are they willing to pay? In the way it delicately unravels, Girards film is about what a work of art means and what private desires abet its acquisition. The bidding starts at $250,000.

The scene then shifts to Italy 1681, where a man, Nicolo Bussotti is carving a violin for his yet unborn child. "This is my masterpiece, the rest is junk" he tells his very pregnant wife, Anna. She is not a woman at peace. She consults a fortune-teller about her future and that of the arriving infant. The teller lays down the cards, and foresees and improbable future of exciting, fearful, joyful, murderous, lustful, melancholy happenings. The prediction doesn't make sense, how can one life accommodate so many events, see so many twists of fate. Is this teller predicting a life of human being whose life span in that age must have averaged five decades? Seconds later, in wonderful image, John Corigliano Academy award winning violin score plays as the woman with her belly exposed enjoys a moment of sun before labour. The scene shifts from the mother and to the father in his workshop where another is being born: he is carving the infant of whom the fortune-teller speaks.

Randomly, the violin falls into an Austrian monastery where the violin is used to teach young pupils. A hundred years pass, and one pupil, a diminutive six-year-old with a weak heart grows particularly attached to the instrument. He is gifted, and in this post-Amadues Austria, the world is on the lookout for such a prodigy. The monks fetch a teacher, he takes the boy to Austria to learn. The teacher is going broke, but offer the boy expensive cheese if he were to perfect his craft "play violin, get cheese" he tells the boys. A keenly observed relationship develops between the pupil and his imperfect teacher in what is the most affecting of the tales witnessed by the violin, the instrument the boy never lets go of, he even takes it to bed with him. This second tale also ends with an unforgettable image.

At this point, years have passed since its conception, but Girard continues to consult his hawkish fortune-teller who says "He will seduce you with his talent, but he is the devil". He is Frederick Pope (Jason Flemyng), another gifted fiddler, but this time a professional. The word breathtaking is often used in movie reviews, so I will use another : muscle-stiffening to describe how he plays. Doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, but when he plays, and Girards camera observes him from a low angle commanding a sumptuous circular concert hall, you will find it physically hard to move. A grandiose figure. But with such obsession comes danger. And this is the most sordid, boldly melodramatic of the stories where Pope and his mistress are so possessive of one another to the point of being pathological. Their passion endangers the instrument. Its next stop, China at the heart of the revolution, and it being an instrument of "the west", it faces burning. Yet in the China story, the film's one weak link, where I think the story was simply to large to tell in such a small segment that was otherwise focused on the protagonists as characters rather then their position in a historic event. In the heart of that turmoil, the violin was never in danger as it was in the hands of the devil and his mistress.

And then we're back again. The journey will surely end with some fat cat buying in the instrument, enclosing it in a case where it will observed by art critics who will marvel uselessly and pointlessly at the craftsmanship. The violin expert Charles Morritz (Samuel L. Jackson) ponders that. He asks his aid played by Don McKellar (who also co-wrote the film with the director) "What would you do with it if you had it". His aid replies "I would take it apart and study it. It is single most perfect acoustical machine". That well it may be, but we've just seen what makes it special. The Jackson's character final action seems all the more clear when you think about it. Through these stories, The Red Violin exquisitely chronicles a life that human beings can never live. The violin must go on, and the stories must go on.

Rating:
Summary: Red Violin is a movie for violinists
Review: As a violinist, I know that many violins come to a bad end, broken, mishandled or other. But following the red violin through its long journey of several hundred years was fun because despite many attempts to bring it to harm, it survived. And the best is to come at the end when it narrowly escapes display in a glass case to the hands of a young violinist. The plot isn't the best but it works, loosely held together through the ancient fortune reader's cards. And it's fun with Joshua Bell's magnificent great violin playing and lots of beautiful music. A must see!

Rating:
Summary: Bravo!
Review: Rarely do I see a movie where my mind does not wander, or where I cannot guess the "secret." The Red Violin, however, is a totally engrossing film which both held me in place and in suspense.

The Red Violin's story is a simple one, using basic plot points as the basis of a life for the title character. Born of tragedy, then sea-tossed through three centuries and countless countries, the Red Violin vicariously experiences birth, death, ressurection, destructive passion, and survival-against-the-odds through the lives of its owners. The owners themselves, spellbound by the beauty of this "acoustically perfect instrument," become its enthralled "lovers."

The true genius of this film is found in its structure: each vignette begins with a brief focus on one of it's new potential owners, seen at a modern-day auction. The scene then shifts back to the Violin's late 17th century birthplace, where a tarot reader turns a card and interprets a phase of the violin's life. The audience is then tossed into that phase described, where the new owner takes possession of the Italian instrument (and vice versa). Finally, the film returns to the auctioneer, and the audience discovers the connection of the potential buyer with the Red Violin's turbulent history. The director has played with in media res structure, reshuffling it and standardizing it for his purpose.

One caveat: Don't be dissuaded by the personification; the filmmakers' touch is feather-lite, restricted to 1. a tune seemingly hummed by the violin into the ear of its various owner/lovers, and 2. the Seer's interpretaion of a "life" for the Red Violin.

It is a good series of stories, well-told and perfectly blended. A "perfectly tuned" movie.

Rating:
Summary: First rate
Review: This is one of the most beautiful movies i have seen for a long time. Spanning eras, it chronicles the journey of a very special violin varnished in red, that whosoever encounters it, will have his or her life changed forever. This story exudes warmth, strength and passion so powerful that it is breath-taking to watch it. What is most crucial, for me, however, is that this movie teaches the importance of valuing the beautiful even to the point of giving up our lives that a heritage can endure. As one reviewers puts it, this movie has everything - enigmatic cinematography, divine music, various languages and excellent actors. Three cheers especially for Sylvia Chang and Samuel Jackson, for their glorious portrayal, respectively, of a woman who will give up her life that the beauty of music can prevail in communist China, and of a man who would relinquish his position, family and himself, that something as precious as the Red Violin will forever be held sacred by the distinguishing few. A first rate movie indeed.

Rating:
Summary: PRETENSIOUS
Review: This is one of the most melodramatic things I have ever seen. I can't believe all the production value that went into this script! The acting is just as overdone as the screenplay. It is an interesting idea, to follow the life of an inanimate object and examine the lives of those who touched it, but this movie has all the subtlety of a monster truck. Its like Masterpiece Theatre mixed with the Days of our Lives. In my opinion, you should avoid it. You'll never get those hours of your life back.

Rating:
Summary: Beautiful, passionate, captivating! 4 1/2 Stars!
Review: I loved this movie even though it is not my normal style. It is a movie you will have to watch without interruption, not just because of the subtitles but also because the plot will jump around a bit. Mostly from a modern day auction, back to different times in history, and repeating the auction scene each time with a little more information. It is slow, but not boring!

A woman's servant tells her future, and it doesn't take too long for anyone to figure out the future is that of the beautiful violin the lady's husband has made for their child, rather than the lady herself. The violin shows up in different times in history, all the way back up to the future at the auction. Each stage in history has it's own story, each filled with beauty, passion, sadness, and love. This is a wonderful story, with rich audio and visual pleasures, completed with fine acting from the cast. Yes, the ending is easy to guess, but I don't feel that it took away from the magnificence of the movie at all.