Intermezzo Part 2

My son has a cold, so he stayed home from school today.  Didn't get much writing/editing done but did manage to run very well (my husband works from home four days a week and was watching my son).  This probably won't be a long post; the cat woke me up again at 5 a.m...it's been a long day.

Re:  "Immortal Beloved," it's a maddening film, in a way...yes, Gary Oldman does a magnificent job. Beethoven was a crank and wildly self-centered, and emotionally damaged from childhood; he constantly sought love, and rejected it, and in the end, he only lived through his music.  This all comes out in Oldman's performance, so it is, in a way, a perfect bit of acting.

And the film itself is so close to being a masterpiece that it is heartbreaking.  There are moments of bathos...not involving Oldman, involving some of the supporting actors.  And in general, the tone of the film is always just a bit overwrought.  Yes, Beethoven was a wildly emotional person.  But we do not get enough of the working Beethoven.  He wrote music, much of the time.  He strolled the streets of Vienna and the surrounding countryside.  He went to dinner parties, where he sometimes, but not always, behaved atrociously.  But he was not a buffoon, and not as forlorn as this movie portrays.

So I guess it is, ultimately, the constant focus on Beethoven's sturm und drag that I object to, not the controversial idea the movie presents about which woman was the object of his greatest passion.  If the film had been able to pull back a little--but we are constantly immersed in Beethoven's love life, and his most dramatic and tragic moments...it gets to be a bit much.  And, ultimately, detracts from our understanding of the man and his music.

I should add, however:  a few scenes from the movie are so remarkable, are so good at capturing Beethoven the raging genius, that I can almost forgive everything that goes off-track in the film...almost.

As I said, this film aims very high, and doesn't hit its mark; "Intermezzo" aimed low and easily succeeded.  But I've been humming the "Ode to Joy" theme all day, and any film that puts Beethoven's miraculous Symphony Number 9 in my head can't be all bad.