The Film
Upon its release in 1994, critical response to the biopic Immortal Beloved was widely varied. Many condemned the film for its historical inaccuracies. Others, perhaps unfairly, compared it to the Mozart biopic from ten years earlier, Amadeus, finding the former to be superior. Now, fourteen years have passed since Immortal Beloved was released, so it is perhaps time for a reassessment of its merits away from the heated debates of its initial release.
Taking as the catalyst for his story the famous "Immortal Beloved" letter that Classical composer Ludwig van Beethoven left behind after his death, writer/director Bernard Rose weaves a historically fictional tale of the renown artist. It is a tale of the life of a man on the constant fringes of society -- an artist in disarray, if you will -- one who can never come to terms with his own status in life. He rails against the upper class, yet he also longs to be one of them, and they reject him at every turn. Through it all, he struggles with his increasing hearing impediment, which only serves to isolate him from the world even more. He cannot ever let on that he is deaf, because he is Beethoven, the great musical genius after all. Gary Oldman does an excellent job in portraying the angst of the artist; the man.
What the film garnered the most criticisms for were its inaccuracies concerning Beethoven's life and historical events. For example, the biggest inaccuracy and most central to the film is, of course, the mystery of the "immortal beloved." I won't say whom Bernard Rose decided to reveal as Beethoven's love, but I will say that he bypassed all of the women that any scholar even gives a passing chance of being the actual subject of the composer's affections. Perhaps Rose was going for an element of surprise, but it just serves to make the entire film feel somewhat silly. There is also the fact that he seems to imply that Beethoven was going to dedicate his Symphony No. 5 (with the famous, so-called "fate knocking at the door" opening) to Napoleon, when in fact it was Beethoven's Symphony No. 3 ("Eroica"), which was originally intended for dedication to Napoleon.
Immortal Beloved also brilliantly interweaves Beethoven's music into the film itself and this serves, quite rightly so, as one of the strongest features of the film. Who needs a film score composer when you have the great Beethoven himself to do the job? From the way the second movement of Symphony No. 7 is used to underlay Karl van Beethoven's (Marco Hofschchneider) attempted suicide, or the gentle playing of the "Moonlight" sonata as Beethoven presses his ear to the piano so he can actually hear himself play, the music itself in this film tells a gripping tale and helps to keep one riveted.
Historical flaws aside, Immortal Beloved offers a very compelling look at the artist as a real person, struggling with his demons and attempting to cope with his deficits. Unlike Amadeus, Immortal Beloved is a more realistic view of the human condition and the nature of artistic genius -- of how it feels to be different in a society that demands conformity.
The Picture
Presented in its original theatrical aspect ratio of 2.40:1 in a 1080p/24 MPEG-2 high definition encoding, Immortal Beloved stands as one of the better catalogue titles available in high definition on the merits of its picture quality alone. Containing a mixture of a purposely muted color palette in scenes during Schindler's investigation and more bold and saturated colors during the flashbacks of Beethoven's life, the transfer is nearly flawless. There are only a few times where some very slight compression noise is evident in the dark areas of the picture.
Film grain is captured nicely and gives the transfer a wonderfully film-like quality, contrast is perfect, black levels are nearly perfect rendering blacks inky and deep, but there are some moments where some detail gets lost in the darkest scenes and blacks crush ever so slightly. The picture is sharp overall, with excellent background and foreground detail. There were a few frames where I noticed some wear to the source, but nothing extreme enough to be distracting and deter from enjoyment of the film. This is reference quality material for a catalogue title, without question.
The Sound
Sony have offered two lossless soundtracks on this release, English Dolby TrueHD 5.1 and French Dolby TrueHD 5.1 dubbed soundtrack. For review purposes I listened to the English TrueHD 5.1 soundtrack. Dialogue, kept mainly to the center channel, is intelligible and well mixed. Though not an overly aggressive mix, there is a decent amount of ambience in the rear channels and appropriate amounts of discrete effects are mixed to the sides and the rear such as the booming of cannons during the scenes of Napoleon's army on the battlefield or the roar of thunder when Beethoven's carriage is stuck in the mud during a storm. During these scenes the LFE is put to very good use, as one can feel the low frequencies rumbling.
The Classical score, an undeniably integral part of this film, is beautifully captured, though not quite live sounding. Appropriately, the sound of the orchestra and various instrumentations are mixed across the front three channels with their ambience mixed into the surround channels just as any good Classical recording should be. The music, however, never overwhelms the dialogue, but does become quite rousing when appropriate. It is an overall well-done soundtrack. My minor complaint would be that the ambience during the more dialogue-driven scenes could have been boosted just a tad.
The Extras
There are only a few extras offered on this release and none are worthy of more than a passing glance. "Beloved Beethoven" (4:3, standard definition) is a brief featurette consisting of interview segments with writer/director Bernard Rose, as well as members of the cast reminiscing on when they first auditioned for their roles. It is also revealed that actor Jeroen Krabbé, who plays Anton Felix Schindler, Beethoven's friend and the man responsible for solving the mystery of the "immortal beloved" and executing his will, was originally cast in the lead role. I mean no disrespect to Mr. Krabbé at all, because he certainly does a fine job portraying Schindler, but I just cannot fathom this film without Oldman in the role of Beethoven. "Original Behind-the-Scenes-Featurette" (4:3, standard definition) is a promotional featurette with more director and cast interviews, and some minor behind the scenes footage of the production. There is also an audio commentary with writer/director Bernard Rose, which is of the typical fare, and three Blu-ray Disc previews all in high definition: "Coming to Blu-ray", Vacancy, and Tekkonkinkreet.
Final Thoughts
Even with its historical inaccuracies, and its focus mainly on the love affairs of the composer, Immortal Beloved still holds up as a compelling glimpse into the life of this revered musical artist. With its wonderful picture and sound and beautiful music by the composer himself played marvelously by Sir George Solti and The London Symphony Orchestra, amongst other artists, this is a title that any lover of Beethoven, Classical music, or film in general should want to have in their collection.
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