Copying Beethoven, (Klang der Stille) (2006)
Average Rating: 4.7/10
Reviews Counted: 80
Fresh: 22 | Rotten: 58
A pretentious historical drama that's ultimately a drag, despite Ed Harris' powerful performance.
Average Rating: 5.1/10
Critic Reviews: 25
Fresh: 8 | Rotten: 17
A pretentious historical drama that's ultimately a drag, despite Ed Harris' powerful performance.
liked it
Average Rating: 3.2/5
User Ratings: 14,048
Movie Info
When a young Vienna Music Conservatory student and aspiring composer accepts a job as a copyist for Ludwig von Beethoven, she soon finds her destiny forever interlinked with that of the legendary classical musician in director Agnieszka Holland's romantic period drama. Beethoven (Ed Harris)'s "Ninth Symphony" is about to make its historical debut, but Beethoven's publisher Herr Schlemmer is dying of cancer. Now in desperate need of a copyist to complete the score, the ailing Schlemmer enlists
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Cast
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Ed Harris
Ludwig Van Beethoven -
Diane Kruger
Anna Holz -
Matthew Goode
Martin Bauer -
Joe Anderson
Karl -
-
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Ralph Riach
Wenzel Schlemmer -
Nicholas Jones
Archduke
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All Critics (80) | Top Critics (25) | Fresh (22) | Rotten (58) | DVD (10)
The direction from Polish New Waver Agnieszka Holland feels more like she's testing a new camera than attempting to capture the nuances of the artistic process, and if we're to believe the script, then all great art derives 'from the gut'.
Top CriticBeethoven turns out to be like every obnoxious self-absorbed creative type you've ever met
The movie is completely beguiling, and it delivers joy, the beautiful spark of the gods.
Someday someone will make a great movie about an immortal composer, but for now the best movie about any Beethoven I've ever seen stars a Saint Bernard.
Always an intelligent presence on screen, Harris here embraces the challenge of showing us the man behind the wall of music.
You may walk out of Copying Beethoven humming the movie. But that's not the same as singing its praises.
Stuck between Kruger's blankness and Harris's overemoting, the film never finds a balance.
The once promising Polish director Agnieszka Holland ("Olivier, Olivier") stumbles with this muddled story about Anna Holtz (Diane Kruger), a 23-year-old composition student sent to 1824 Vienna to transcribe sheet music for the demanding and cruel Ludwig
It's the kind of movie made purely for acting awards, which is really unfair to audiences who deserve at least some story for their money.
You can mock this film if you like, but it remains watchable throughout. And the ears have it when the eyes don't.
As wooden as a piano stool.
If the composer's shade could hear the words this script has put in his mouth it really would be a case of "roll over, Beethoven", right there in his grave.
A great example of that time-honoured genre, the biopic so silly it plays like a spoof.
Amateurishly written, scarcely acted tosh.
A fatuous, bafflingly imagined tale of the unhappy and unwell Beethoven and his ordeal in preparing the Ninth Symphony for its premiere.
Diane Kruger is the most appealing scenery in this rose-tinted nonsense.
Boring and pointless.
Like the wrinkled buttocks he flashes at Kruger, however, this portrait of the artist could use some tightening up.
Brief bursts of passion aside, this is a lifeless facsimile of the great artist's last days.
A dull and uninspiring film, despite Harris' best efforts.
A great soundtrack is drowned out by a lot of tedious harping on.
A horrid mess of a film, only the music elevates it from being a total dud.
Enough to keep the interest going -- and one sequence that raises the film to a level many better films never dream of attaining.
While much of this film is intriguing and nicely performed, it also feels rather strained and corny.
Audience Reviews for Copying Beethoven, (Klang der Stille)
Super Reviewer
The film may be seen as rehash (how many Beethoven films can there be?, etc.), but Harris' performance alone is what solidifies this movie as and makes it stand out from, say, Immortal Beloved; in which Gary Oldham's portrayal was a bit more off-putting and creepy. Diane Kruger also gives a noteworthy performance as Beethoven's composing assistant. She brings a resilience to a character that shouldn't even exist, given the sexist divisions and gender role issues that existed in that era.
The film is shot beautifully and its cinematography is brilliant. The art direction gushes with lush sets and decor and the score is very much appropriate for a movie in which a score should not overpower the music that its subject matter is directly dealing with (in this case Beethoven's own compositions.) Ed Harris definitely deserves an Oscar nomination for Best Actor (although it probably won't happen.) Definitely catch it if you can. It's worth searching for it.
Super Reviewer
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Foreign Titles
- Klang der Stille- Copying Beethoven (DE)
- Copying Beethoven (UK)
I don't mean Copying Beethoven is unwatchable, there is one particular scene in which it's all about the music... it plays rather like a music video, but it's fantastic, epic, and one can only wish that the rest of the film was that good. It's an inspired, electrifying ode to the symphony itself... and all I could really think about as I watched it was Alex De Large on his bed, and the snake by his side, and his face... Lovely lovely Ludwig Van! lol. Unfortunately, it seems to me that the film suffered a great deal from having such an exciting scene right in the middle of it, because the dull parts that came later looked even worse. If only they could cut that scene out and market it as a short film... they would have received much better reviews, and they would have said all they appeared to want to say.