Hatefully Trivial

Rating: 1/10 (24 January 2008)

I didn't write about this film right after seeing it because it made me so mad that I knew I'd be overly harsh with it.
It has now been many years, and I just looked over the comments already made, and I wasn't going to add anything until I saw one recommending lightening up on the film.
Why? One reason given is that of course it's not musically accurate, but it's no more inaccurate than Star Trek or Star Wars is to actual science. I can't argue with the bare facts of that statement, but...
I don't think anybody seriously believes there are Jedi running around fighting evil with light sabers or that there are hand held phasers out there. It's fantasy, and that's understood. Nearly everybody who isn't deprived of the ability to hear music knows about it, though.
My chief hatred of this movie lies in the fact that it perverts what a lot of people think music is. I have had more than one student say something like, "I thought I just had to play the sunset." Many people with such impressions will give up when that fantasy is shattered, and some under my tutelage have.
Star Trek and Star Wars never set a potential scientist on a false path like that. I even remember seeing specials on either the History Channel or A&E about scientists who were motivated by what they thought might be possible in those shows. The fantasy inspired in that case. It did not create a false expectation.
What this movie has to say about music and being a musician is trivial when it is not dead wrong. That is not simply bad, it is hateful.
A far better movie for dealing with this topic is a French one called "Tous les matins du monde", and I commented on that one at this address:
http://imdb.com/title/tt0103110/usercomments-19
It's not a film you can show your kids, but the whole musician conundrum is handled with far more subtlety and truth.
I know that there are plenty of other examples of Hollywood inaccuracy as far as film topics go. James Bond has little to do with real espionage. Rambo is not anything close to realistic as far as being a soldier goes.
Becoming a soldier or a spy, though, probably isn't something you try to become until long after such illusions are discarded. I have had adult students come to me thinking "Mr. Holland's Opus" is completely accurate. One even asked me if I knew whatever became of Glenn Holland.
The piece of music at the end is pretty bad too, but I figured that was going to happen. There's an awful lot of music I hate that the general populace seems to love, but that does not trigger my revulsion for this film. The lack of reality also doesn't do it. "Amadeus" doesn't have a lot of factual accuracy in it either, but I still find it entertaining.
It is the trivialization of what music is and what being a musician means that gets to me. If they had just tried to make an entertaining movie, I probably would have found it OK, but this contemptible piece of twaddle trivializes something that needs more serious attention, and I can't forgive that.