The movie's as good as the fiddle was!

Rating: 9/10 (26 February 2000)

Sheesh! It is amazing how much control the Hollywood establishment has over the entire spectrum of news media. In the morning paper, I read about some new movie for the first time ever. At noon, there it is again in a news magazine I get in the mail. Then I see some "news" story about it at six o'clock, and later on in the evening there's some story about one of the stars, and later again, an interview with the director and so on. The next day, the movie opens in a theater near you... and it turns out to be one mediocre dog doo of a flick that's begging seats in the "dollar theatre" a month later, only to be forgotten by year's end.
Then, there are movies like this one.
I'd never heard of it when I happened by chance to see it at a friend's house.
And I'll never forget it. What a masterpiece!
If you're a musician, and especially if your first instrument was a hand-me-down, you might appreciate the peculiar tendency of a musical instrument to absorb and even accumulate the human soul, and find its way into the most appropriate hands. That's what this movie is about. Although if you're like me, you might think it's about that one hand-me-down that nobody else wanted, that got you started, the one that years later, when you saw some kid admiring it, you just *knew* it no longer belonged to you...