journal features

movie review - The Red Violin

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

Toronto, 1999.07.26

This is a beautiful movie about a violin. It begins with the violin's 'birth', and follows the violin as an ersatz child of its creator. Through an excellent plot mechanism involving a tarot reading at the time of the violin's inception, the story of the instrument is followed from owner to owner, from regal antechamber to monk's retreat, then to Gypsie camp, an English estate, and on to China (just in time for the cultural revolution).

Along the way, it gets shot, burned, stolen, buried, exhumed, smuggled, and copied in a forgery. Even in the final minutes of the movie, the actions of those around the beautiful instrument are unclear (my fiancée and I differed completely on our interpretation of Samuel Jackson's actions as the last 'owner'; I figured he Did the Right Thing).

The cinematography, the music, and the cast are excellent. This is a long movie (>130 minutes!), but captivating. I was glued to it. Strongly recommended.

rand()m quote

The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to such a pass that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love, and in order to occupy and distract himself without love he gives way to passions and coarse pleasures, and sinks to bestiality in his vices, all from continual lying to other men and to himself.

—Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov