The engaging enigma of The Silence Before Bach demonstrates an artistic wisdom that is as satisfying as it is challenging.
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08/01/08
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The Silence Before Bach (2008)
85 %
Reviews Counted: 13 Fresh: 11 Rotten:2 Average Rating: 6.6/10
Rated: Not Rated
Runtime: 1 hr 42 mins
Theatrical Release: 2008
Synopsis: The Silence before Bach is an approach to music and the trades and subjects that surround it through Bach’s works. A look at the profound dramaturgic relationship between image and music where the latter is not merely conceived as subsidiary to the image but as a subject of the narration in... [More]
Genre: Dramas
Director: Pere Portabella
Reviews
1 - 13 (sorted by date)
A dog watches its blind master tune a piano. It's only 10 minutes into The Silence Before Bach and already I am bored as that dog.
08/01/08
Think of it strictly as a wonderful music video. Hey, Pink Floyd has a movie, so why not Bach?
03/03/08
Driven solely by the filmmaker's prosaic associations. Portabella does not discover the composer through his music.
02/05/08
About as far away from a conventional composer biopic as Kraft's products are from real cheese.
02/03/08
The demolition of the music bio-pic as witnessed by Todd Haynes' I'm Not There and the parody Walk Hard continues robustly with this time-tripping melange from Spanish director Pere Portabella.
01/31/08
Top Critic
Provide[s] gorgeous lensing and art direction and some of the world's most beautiful music.
01/30/08
Top Critic
Top Critic
A slippery formal exercise of the kind that divides viewers into the enthralled and the infuriated.
01/30/08
Arguably stronger conceptually than visually, surreal mix of the unexpected and the banal is definitely not to everybody's taste. But the music is inarguably sublime.
01/29/08
Top Critic
At once cerebral film essay and unsweetened ear candy, Pere Portabella's The Silence Before Bach is nearly as tough to categorize as its maker.
01/29/08
Top Critic
The film swings back through history with its own delicate meshing of enchantment and mystery, contemplating a planet whether before Bach or in our own time 'of emptiness with no resonance.'
01/24/08
Brings Bach’s music to life with a mysterious, magnificent blend of drama, documentary, and quasi-surrealist whimsy.
01/24/08
Top Critic1 - 13 (sorted by date)
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