ambitious, beautifully crafted tale

Rating: 8/10 (6 July 1999)

"The Red Violin" is a fine, beautifully crafted film that follows the life of a rare Italian violin as it bears witness to the lives of various unrelated people who come in contact with it throughout the centuries. Through these characters, we explore the universal human propensities for fear, passion, jealousy, love, greed, oppression and survival in even the most dire of circumstances. Like many anthology films, "The Red Violin" loses some of its emotional force through the fact that the characters, by their very nature, cannot be fully developed and therefore tend a bit toward "type". However, each segment is so lovingly created in terms of setting, costume and cinematography, that the viewer is drawn into the many worlds the film creates. The most impressive part of the film is the brilliant overlapping time structure that is remarkably complex and creates a tremendous amount of excitement and tension in the last half hour of the film when all the elements from the various narrative skeins are pulled together to reveal the whole picture. In fact, the last half hour, in which the violin is restored and the man in charge (played by Samuel L. Jackson) must confront a moral dilemma, lifts the film to a plane far higher than one expects it to go. The surprise ending is also very brave for trusting the audience to accept a morally ambiguous resolution. All in all, this is a mighty impressive achievement.