THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, January 31, 1995 TAG: 9501310041
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E9 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Movie Review
SOURCE: BY MAL VINCENT MOVIE CRITIC
LENGTH: Medium: 76 lines
HOLLYWOOD HAS taken its time about making a biography of Ludwig van Beethoven. Given the power of his music, it is surprising that he has escaped the movie moguls until now. One wishes they had waited longer.
If you expected ``Immortal Beloved'' to be another ``Amadeus,'' you will be disappointed. Writer-directed Bernard Rose has reduced Beethoven's rather traumatic life to no more than a cheap mystery movie. Even more unnerving, he reduced the composer's greatest works to hurried snippets that are often misused as background for dramatic scenes.
The premise of the new movie is a detective hunt for the lady to whom Beethoven addressed his ``immortal beloved'' love letter. The letter, written in 1812, was found among his papers at his death in 1827.
In a direct copy of the search for Rosebud in 1941's ``Citizen Kane,'' Beethoven's friend Anton Schindler (played by Jeroen Krabbe, a former James Bond villain) searches for the lady. It seems the famous composer has left her his entire estate. The film falsifies facts openly and freely. For one thing, the mystery woman was never mentioned in Beethoven's will. For another, Schindler never, as in the movie, read the famous Beethoven funeral oration written by Austrian playwright Franz Grillparzer.
In the most flagrant denial of fact, director Rose (``Darkman'') refuses to accept musicologist Maynard Soloman's extensive research, which, since its publication in 1977, has been the accepted version of the love-mystery. The writings identified, with a good degree of circumstantial evidence, Antonie Brentana, the wife of one of the composer's close friends, as Beethoven's mystery lover. She isn't even a character in the movie.
Instead, the director's three candidates include countesses played by the luminous Isabella Rossellini and the mischievous Valeria Golino. The third candidate is apparently his sister-in-law, Johanna van Beethoven.
The film goes out of its way to deliver a ``surprise'' ending that, contrary to all logic, is indeed a surprise.
Gary Oldman works hard as the composer, but he has a gaunt, thin, modern-punkish look that fails to suggest the squat gruffness usually suggested. (Oldman got the role only after Anthony Hopkins, wisely, turned it down.)
Sir George Solti conducts the London Philharmonic for most of the score, most of which is recorded so loudly that tonal subtleties are missing. It is strange, too, that Rose made the musical choices he did. For example, he uses the ``Eroica'' Symphony as background as a woman bares her breast in a palace garden. (Perhaps he mistakenly thought it was the ``Erotica'' Symphony?) In turn, he uses the Fifth Symphony to suggest Napoleon's siege of Vienna when this clearly would have been the place to use the ``Eroica.''
Rose turned out a beautiful looking film. The palaces of modern-day Prague suggest the splendor and mood of times past. Combined with costuming and such spectacular crowd scenes as Beethoven's funeral, the film is quite a visual knock-out. If only looks were everything. On all levels other than visual, this is merely a Silly Symphony. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
COLUMBIA PICTURES
Gary Oldman plays Beethoven in ``Immortal Beloved.''
Graphic
MOVIE REVIEW
``Immortal Beloved''
Cast: Gary Oldman, Isabella Rossellini, Valeria Golino, Jeroen
Krabbe, Johanna Ter Steege, Marco Hofschneider, Miriam Margolyes
Director and Screenplay: Bernard Rose
Music: Sir George Solti conducting the London Symphony Orchestra
MPAA rating: R (bare breasts, mature themes)
Mal's rating: Two stars
Location: R/C Columbus Movie 12, Virginia Beach
by CNB