A Musical Detective Movie

Rating: Null/10 (14 March 2009)

The Red Violin is a sweeping drama that travels across multiple centuries and multiple continents, landing in a Montreal auction house to which the movie returns at intervals and for the final half hour and climax. At issue is a violin, the bids for which are creeping upwards toward those for a Stradivarius, sold immediately before.
The movie opens in Italy in 1681 with a perfectionist violin maker whose trade secrets are of scientific acoustical interest 300+ years later. His wife is pregnant, and the anticipation of a child prompts a special manufacturing effort.
Samuel L. Jackson plays, brilliantly, the New York consultant who is commissioned by the auction house to appraise a newly arrived lot of string instruments. Jackson's character knows his stuff. But it's not just his brain that's into the task. It's also his heart. Therein lies the intrigue, and the compelling interest.
This is an absolutely topnotch Canadian movie. A musical detective story, as it were.