Bum note... Ed Harris in Copying Beethoven
Copying Beethoven, a new film about the composer (not the dog), has sparked an anguished essay in the New York Times. Why, cinematically speaking, has Mozart got all the good tunes? Why can't moviedom's finest do an Amadeus on old Ludwig?
There are many answers to that question. Biopics, whoever the subject, are notoriously difficult to pull off. Biopics of composers are no different - even if they come with the advantage of a ready-made score. I'm a huge admirer of Tony Palmer's appropriately vast Wagner, for example, but it bombed with the general public. The best of Ken Russell's many musical dramadocs - Elgar and Delius stand out - were made for television. By the time he tried to repeat the trick on the silver screen, Russell had lost his discipline - Mahler was his best effort, but Lisztomania was just embarrassing.
Amadeus had three enormous advantages. It had Mozart's music. It had Milos Forman's cinematic feel for Prague. And it had the creative imagination of Peter Schaffer's play. In other words, it wasn't rooted in facts and sources. It roamed free with ideas and possibilities. Its portrayal of the composer was in some ways a historical travesty. But it was a brilliant film - and it brought millions to Mozart.
Something of the same occurs in a generally forgotten German cinematic masterpiece of the generation before Forman's Amadeus - Daniele Huillet's and Jean-Marie Straub's Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach, in which the role of the composer is played by the great harpsichordist Gustav Leonhardt. Much of this black-and-white 1968 film is speculative, but it has a beguiling and memorable feeling of authenticity - and it opened many ears and eyes to Bach, just as Amadeus did to Mozart.
So why does Beethoven seem to elude the film-makers? I haven't seen Copying Beethoven yet, but it sounds as though it is only the latest of many imperfect attempts to crack the Ludwig problem. The last one, Immortal Beloved, with Gary Oldman as the composer, had many good moments, but it was no Amadeus.
I don't think Beethoven himself is too great, too difficult, too grumpy or too anything else to make a good movie. My guess is that Beethoven has just been unlucky in his treatment on the silver screen. He'll never provide great love interest, but with the right budget and the right star - Daniel Craig could do it - there's a terrific flashback film about Beethoven on his death bed, with the late quartets for soundtrack, just waiting to be made.
