Lackluster
Following on the far more superior heels of Milos Foreman’s “Amadeus”, “Immortal Beloved” hoped to fill in the life of Ludwig van Beethoven. The film plays out in the form of a mystery yet is surprisingly low on anything actually riveting, or even really compelling. It has a committed Gary Oldman performance at its center and some wonderful looking production values but is otherwise erratic, episodic, and a tad shallow.
It takes place shortly after Beethoven’s funeral, which is when his secretary Schindler (Jeroen Krabbe) discovers a letter wishing to bequeath his music and estate to his “immortal beloved”, yet there is no indication of who this person is. Schindler takes it upon himself to find the woman, going through three of the most important women in his life. There’s Countess Giulietta Guicciardi (Valeria Golino), a student of his who gradually began to succumb to him even though she first thought him an ugly oaf, Countess Anna Erdody (Isabella Rosellini), an older woman who was able to stand up to his fiery temperament, and then there is Johanna Reiss (Johanna Ter Steege).
Through Oldman, we get a sense of the callous, miserable man Beethoven was in his private life, his eyes usually downcast and seemingly lost in other thoughts rather than for the people around him. He was particularly cruel to his brother for having married a whore like Johanna and for having a son, Karl, with her. He makes life hell for all three, at one point even getting the courts to put Karl in his custody. Other than this episode, the film seems to devolve from there.
Particularly of interest is the subject of the character’s deafness, which is portrayed very well in one scene where he struggles to conduct an orchestra before being led off stage by Erdody. The film almost makes it seem like that led to him being an angry, abusive wash-out after that. But he did continue to compose even after the disability yet the film never defines how, or even that he actually did.
The structure of the film hurts it- we’re going by secondhand knowledge (told in narration through flashbacks by the three women) which always feels like there’s a continuing emotional distance between the audience and main subject. There are a few interesting tidbits that possibly define who he is as an adult but we also wonder if there’s much more to him than the miserable crabapple we usually see before us.
Written and directed by Bernard Rose, the film is probably at its best when focusing on the soundtrack or when it gives the music a particular visual flair, as when he flashes back to a gorgeous looking moment from Beethoven’s boyhood as we hear “Ode to Joy” composed in the present. Would that if we were allowed a bit more personality of the man who wrote it, and the feelings that went into it, “Immortal Beloved” possibly could have been counted among one of the strongest musical bio-pics out there.