Artistic junk!

Rating: 4/10 (27 July 2002)

Don't confuse my comment with Hollywood junk, which is just pure trash that is entertaining only in fits. The Red Violin is artistic junk, meaning it is a movie that tries to be inspired and that isn't bad, but it isn't very entertaining at all.
I caught The Red Violin on Bravo, home of all the "artsy" movies, not knowing what it was all about and not knowing that it was supposed to be a "masterpiece". I hate it when people toss about that term like it has no meaning because this movie is most definitely not that. A masterpiece implies a movie that not only has narrative finesse but narrative cohesion. The Red Violin is not even entertaining, so it definitely doesn't have the first. At first, I thought The Red Violin was a cool foreign film. But as the movie progressed, it became clear that it wasn't even that. The movie is all about one single solitary violin and what happens to it over the centuries. Sure there are groups of characters that pop up and tell their stories around the violin, but there is no single main character or even groups of main characters. The players don't stick around long enough, and in the end, it's all about the stupid violin. I don't know about the rest of you, but it's hard to care about a violin. The movie jumps about between the centuries so much like they're some kind of cool plot device, that I was uncertain what was going on. As such, it most definitely lacks narrative cohesion. As such, it most definitely is NOT a masterpiece.
I don't know what most people saw in this movie. I guess it's one of those movies that everybody but me seems to think is one of the greatest movies of all time. I don't think it's even entertaining. It's not a bad movie, but it's got too many flaws, is just boring, and is just way too artsy and self-congratulatory for its own good. I like artistic foreign films. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Brotherhood of the Wolf. But The Red Violin is should be thrown into the reject pile. 4/10.