Has anyone seen this new motion picture yet?
Any thoughts?

I have some  - but I would like to hear what others think...

That seems a bit harsh a statement in and of itself!


While not having seen this, no doubt it is the case.  But what might be more interesting again would be just to read a bio

Quite right, George. I think LvB was maybe blinded by his devotion to a certain French general. No doubt it distracted him from purely musical judgments.

Further to my message above, I think if you base the whole film around something entirely fictional when it purports to deal with a historic event, then it is pointless. All right, there was Amadeus, but Mozart did wonder whether he was being poisoned and Salieri did "confess" later on, and it's only one part of the film.

Oops, just thought...

This thread isn't about Brahms' Symphony no 1, is it?

I wouldn't bother, Mary.  I didn't really notice if it looked good - nothing out of the ordinary, I guess.  My cinema partner told me in some shots the camera wiggled from left to right a bit before becoming steady and filming the proceedings as if it were absent  - but I didn't notice that.

I think you are right, Tony: the ficticious story doesn't really add anything to the historical facts, so you start asking yourself why they made the film in the first place.  In fact, I found the historically true aspects of the story to be the most interesting (Beethoven's relationship with his nephew, Beethoven's relationship with nature - although Beethoven's nephew disappeared completely from the plot halfway the film)... and the whole invented master-pupil thing rather bland.  It wasn't even really clear what sort of relationship it was - love? admiration? influence?  It seemed rather like a bloodless vehicle the writers invented to have Beethoven explaining things like: "The vibrations on the air are the breath of God speaking to man's soul. Music is the language of God. We musicians are as close to God as man can be. We hear his voice, we read his lips, we give birth to the children of God, who sing his praise. That's what musicians are." (> imdb.com) and much more of the same exalted, heroic-romantic stuff.  (Before conducting the Ninth, Beethoven whispers to himself: 'From now on, music will never be the same.' or something to that extent...)

You can have fun with this film - when you're in a malevolent mood - if you regard it as a 'Spot the historical incongruities'-competition.  A teacher once told me about an old black-and-white film about Schubert, where you could see, in the background of his music room, resting on the piano stand, some music paper with 'Die Unvollendete' written above it  - Well, there are some similar gaffes in this film... 

On top of that, the Ninth Symphony sounded rather odd, but I can't quite put my finger on it.  Oh, and the conducting by Beethoven was rather... vague ---   

To mention one good thing, before I start to sound like an old s*d: during the end titles, everyone in the theatre remained seated to listen to the music  .

Please post your impressions when you have seen this film.

Yes, and there was the film 'Immortal Beloved' too - which I thought rather good.  It sticked to the facts more closely than 'Copying', even though it investigated the rather unclear 'immortal beloved'-thing, and had a bit of that exaggerated romanticized Hollywood touch.