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‘Violin’ looks like a
true labor of love
By Samuel McKewon
Editor
Francois Girard spent five years
making ‘The Red Violin,” a movie that
spans several countries, four or five lan
guages and an abundance of extraordi
nary music.
The time put in truly shows. While
not a perfect film, “The Red Violin,”
showing at the AMC 24 in Omaha, is
surely a labor of Girard’s love, a labor
that deliver a beautiful message about
the power of music, the instruments that
make them, and how people relate to it
It’s not easy to pin down the plot
beyond the obvious 317-year trip the
violin takes in the 131-minute film. It
starts in violin shop in 1681 with a
craftsman (Carlo Cecchi) who makes
the perfect violin for his son, who
arrives stillborn, taking his mother
along with him. The violin starts its
journey from there.
The trips it takes are vast, spans cul
tures and is intercut with scenes in mod
ern-day Montreal, where an auction for
the same violin is taking place. An
appraiser (Samuel L. Jackson, in an
impressive turn) understands the vio
lin’s value and wants to keep it a secret
Whether he will or not is left until the
end.
, i ne strongest element oi tne movie
is how Girard relates this auction with
die rest of the violin’s travels, the best of
which is a section set in Victorian
England, as the violin falls into the
hands of self-absorbed soloist
Frederick Pope (Jason Flemyng) who
gains his inspiration from a novelist
mistress Victoria Byrd (Greta Scacchi).
He can only make music when they
make love, and when Victoria leaves for
Russia, chaos ensues.
Another scene involves a young
prodigy (Christop Koncz) who loves
the violin to the point he cannot part
with it His teacher (Jean-Luc Bideau)
drags the boy out of a monastery to
reach his potential, meeting with tragic
results.
The most involving trip takes the
violin through the Chinese Cultural
Revolution, where we believe it’s been
destroyed, only to find one woman
(Sylvia Chang) saves it from fire.
“The Red Violin” is filled with
The Facts
Htto:TheFMVM>r
Stars: Samuel L Jackson, Greta
Scacchi, Don McKellar, Jason
Flemyng
Director: Francois Girard
Rating: R (language, sexual content
Running Time: 2:11 (131 minutes)
Grade: B+
Five Words: Although long, ‘Red
Violin’works
incredible sequences set to music, built
to inspire and call further to the film’s
overall theme of man’s bond with
music. Girard draws this connection
well, if a bit overstated at times. A few
of his characters, co-created in the
script with Don McKellar, seem to have
a blind obsession to the instrument for '
which they have no way of describing.
Only Samuel L. Jackson, the best actor
in this movie by a couple light years, is
able to create a full-bodied character in
a way where others fail.
If there’s a problem with the movie
it’s that Girard makes a reasonably sim
ple premise too complicated. Instead of
following the violin in a chronological
order, he skips time and uses flash for
ward, as opposed flashback, to drama
tize die movie. It would work to certain
extent if the movie didn’t also use the
flashback technique interspersed with
the flashforwards. Not that’s it’s confus
ing, just tiresome. Since it took him five
years, Girard must have felt he could do
whatever he chose.
Most of his film works, though, and
Jackson’s scenes, even though at the
end, serve as a fine detective sequence,
even though we know the results that
he’s about to find out The twist of irony
at the end is especially sweet and pro
vides a proper close to Girard’s overall
theme regarding the purpose of music.
It comes most properly in one scene
when Jackson addresses McKellar,
who plays a musical technician who’d
rather take apart the violin than play it
A strange journey, “The Red
Violin” actually picks up pace at the
end of the film, which is rare. It’s not a
particularly exciting film, but it is an
inspiring one, filled with a better
soundtrack than any other movie this
year.
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