Has anyone seen this? Sounds fantastic.
http://www.d-kaz.com/reviews/review.php?id=446
Quote:Portabellaâs title is inspired by a poem that rhetorically asks what the worldâGod, musical instruments, European societyâwas like before Bachâs music came to uplift them. But rather than pursue a history of religious music in society before the maestroâs arrival, Portabella playfully literally observes the silence beforeâand usually for a beat afterâBach.
The opening shot sets both the tone (contemplative) and idea (the title). The camera tracks through the empty white halls of an art gallery before coming to rest seemingly at the same blank corner at which its movement began, when a player piano humorously starts rotating into frame and we track backwards following its lurching, awkward movement as it mechanically plays a Goldberg variation. Here it is the purity of the light, the emptiness of the rooms, and the effect of the spaceâalmost-but-not-quite loopingâthat precedes Bachâs music. The next sequence of a man slowly walking to a grand piano. He is blind, and he proceeds not to play Bach but rather to tune the instrument, making sounds that hint at the work of the recently deceased György Ligeti, whose music is literally evoked later later in the film. Clearly a myriad of possibilities can precede the playing of Bachâs music, and Portabellaâs graceful, reflective filmâpart cinematic gallery piece, part scattering of fictional excerpts, part documentaryâimagines many, if not them all.
We see Bach in his workshop upon receiving a grant, and then performing a piece for the anonymous messenger. We see Bachâs son in his house in 18th century Leipzig, goofing around with his sister before sitting down to practice. The sounds of these recordings are just as important as Portabellaâs visuals, the supple recession of the drawknobs on an organ at the end of a piece, the dynamic background clatter during a cello piece remarkably performed on an empty Leipzig subway, the difference between a player piano, a grand, and a clavier. The place of music in lives, as practice, as a vocation, as a trade, as a hobby, or escape. As a thing to fill space and time, or to move away from itâPortabellaâs film expresses all this without pretense. Even with the elegance of Ãskar Gómezâs cool photography and the deliberateness of most of Portabellaâs camera movements, there is a casualness to the film, an admission above all else of the small silences before the music.
http://www.d-kaz.com/reviews/review.php?id=446