An excellent film about music, passion, and obsession with excellence

Rating: Null/10 (12 July 1999)

I missed this film at the Seattle International Film Festival but figured it was going to come back for regular showings shortly thereafter, and it did. This is clearly a 4 star movie. I think the sign of a great movie is that you forget you are in a theater watching it - you are drawn into it far enough to feel like you are watching real events unfold. Another sign of a great movie is that you are really elated about the successes some characters have or "depressed" about tragic things that happen to the characters. This movie succeeds on both fronts. And who would have thought that a violin could be a character so successfully? The score is fabulous - I want to own a copy of John Corigliano's music. The Paganini-like virtuoso in the middle of the film and the Paganini-like music were remarkable. The well enunciated Italian, German, French, and Mandarin (the last-mentioned I can only say presumably well enunciated) also added to my enjoyment of the movie. I want to rent the video of Immortal Beloved again to compare the two films more closely. As Rachmaninoff once said, "Music is enough for a lifetime, but one lifetime could never be enough for music."