Review of Copying Beethoven (2006) by Jonathan B — 03 Aug 2013

Great passion, a spirited female copyist, and an unusual friendship yield the birth of Beethoven's Ninth, or so Holland would like you to think. However, Holland's Beethoven is hardly accurate.

Superficial unruly passions, a historically nonexistent copyist, and a quasi-romance did NOT create the Ninth. Holland completely ignores the noble, philosophical, and political motivations that drove Beethoven and his music.

Holland renders up a two-dimensional emotional crass composer, who needs Anna, the copyist, to save him and his music; without Anna, the Ninth would be far from the passionate beauty it is today, or worse, it would not exist at all.

Yet even ignoring history, Holland's story is itself shallow with shallow characters. My biggest complaint is that we the audience lose most of Beethoven's true character as well as all the historical and philosophical significance of the Ninth because the director decided that an eccentric, bipolar, HALF-deaf, half-developed Beethoven was a better fit for her (boring) movie.

Btw, kudos to Beethoven for actually being FULLY-deaf when he wrote the Ninth.