Copying Beethoven

Copying Beethoven
by Agnieszka Holland

Copying Beethoven
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DVD details

Actor: Bill Stewart, Diane Kruger, Ed Harris, Matyelok Gibbs, Ralph Riach
Director: Agnieszka Holland
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Dubbed); Spanish (Dubbed), Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround
Format: AC-3, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD-Video, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 2.35:1
Running Time: 104 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2007-04-03
Audience Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)

DVD Reviews of Copying Beethoven

DVD Review: Visually stunning
Summary: 4 Stars

Copying Beethoven is not meant to be a biography and is not a documentary. We all know the real facts about the first performance of Beethoven's ninth ( or perhaps we all think that we know). We all seem to know that they are not depicted historically in this film.

Copying Beethoven is just a charming film, a piece of cinematic art, that is a pleasure to view and to hear. Each face is a portrait and each scene is tastefully presented to us, the viewers.

So rather than pick it apart, thinking that it was trying to be what it wasn't, I suggest that we all just relax, watch, listen and enjoy.

DVD Review: Smacks of Amadeus
Summary: 2 Stars

This just happened to be on cable last night. I knew not to compare it to the love story "Immortal Beloved" (which I happened to like very much) but I never dreamed that it would openly plagiarise "Amadeus". Wasn't Beethoven interesting enough on his own? It was truly disappointed with the "deathbed" scene (okay, he wasn't dying, but you get the idea)... the way he called out the notes, asked Anna if "she got it", moved his hands while humming, etc., it was so tragically copycat of Mozart dictating the Requiem to Salieri that I couldn't bear to watch.

Now I did give this 3 stars for 3 reasons: I liked having a little more background on Beethoven's nephew; I loved the Salieri and Orsini name-dropping; but most of all, having never heard anything of the 9th symphony except the chorale "Ode to Joy", I was enthralled with the entire scene... the faces of the audience in awe and the look on his face when Anna turns him to face the throng (which I was mentally combining with same scene from "Immortal").

DVD Review: An IRRESISTIBLE target. *punch*
Summary: 1 Stars

I like Ed Harris but not as Beethoven. He looks right, but sounds wrong. I don't like American actors playing historical figures; that didn't work in the 1940s, and still does not.

But I MOST don't like this silly movie for the model bridge-smashing scene. How dare they portray Beethoven as having ever done such a thing? It's sacrilege. It maligns a dead man. It panders to this generation's insistence on having vile, unacceptable behavior represented in all venues of entertainment, lionized as "interesting" and "believable" and "understandable" and "common to us all, after all." We used to insist on heroism. Now we insist on bringing icons down to our own lowest level.

This movie, especially that scene, followed by the young lady's taking 15 seconds to give in and stay with that infantile, violent malignant narcissist, is CUT OUT for the reviewer who craves a good vent.

As for the DVD, it might be fine quality, I don't know. I was too offended by the content to notice either way. I clicked it off while the camera was on that doorway, the instant her skirt appeared in the frame, indicating that she had come RIGHT back after saying "I don't even want to be near you."

That isn't a story. That is canned, predictable, lazy movie-making.

DVD Review: No, it's not "Amadeus" nor even close but...
Summary: 4 Stars

...with a superb performance by Harris and two hours of gorgeous Kruger, how can you miss? The music is great too...

DVD Review: Copying Beethoven
Summary: 4 Stars

This is one movie that got over-looked by most. It's a delightful movie, and although it's a fictionalized account of a certain period in Beethoven's life, it is still a VERY intertaining movie. Ed Harris is great! Just thinking about it now as I'm writing this brings a smile to my heart!

Description of Copying Beethoven

When young Anna Holz (Diane Kruger), a Viennese music student is asked to transcribe scoring notes for the great Ludwig van Beethoven (Harris), she eagerly accepts, despite warnings about his volatile behavior. Part maestro, part mentor and part madman, Beethoven reluctantly relies on Anna to help him realize the culmination of his art.

A passionate, powerful drama based loosely on the final months of Ludwig van Beethoven's life, Copying Beethoven finds the maestro a haunted man, composing the most revolutionary yet unappreciated work of his lifetime; largely deaf; disappointed in his relationship with a wastrel nephew; and fascinated by a young, female composer, Anna Holtz (Diane Kruger), who goes to work for him transcribing music. Staying as a guest at a convent and engaged to a stolid engineer, Anna is drawn to Beethoven's tempestuous genius. Half the time he's enchanted by her and seems to see straight through to her soul. The other half, he's shouting at her for her timidity or flattery. Hardly a mouse, Anna fights back. The more she does, the more Beethoven recognizes in her a kindred survivor, someone with whom he can reveal his vulnerability and the burden of his artistry. Ed Harris' Beethoven is wracked by pain but not overwhelmed by it; he looks like a man who understands his responsibility to nature too well to merely disintegrate. ("God whispers in most men's ears," Beethoven says. "He shouts in mine.") Director Agnieszka Holland (Olivier, Olivier) oversees a handsome, alternately tender and brutal drama, with several thrilling moments, including the stunned look of audience members hearing the world premiere of the glorious 9th Symphony. --Tom Keogh

Copying Beethoven Extras

Watch Ed Harris speak about portraying Beethoven in this exclusive clip.



Beyond Copying Beethoven

Copying Beethoven Soundtrack

Famous Composers: Ludwig Van Beethoven

More From MGM



Stills from Copying Beethoven







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