Tous les matins du monde

Plot synopsis:
The film begins with a long plan-sequence lasting six minutes on the old, decrepit face of Marin Marais (Gérard Depardieu) who is conducting a master class. As he asks for a viol and starts playing, with tears in his eyes he recalls his old teacher, Monsieur de Sainte Colombe (Jean-Pierre Marielle), and his apparent own failure as a musician in his shallow life: I am an impostor, and I am worth nothing. This hint of fraud focuses the viewer toward a possible secret to be discovered, recalling the rivalry between Salieri and Mozart in the film Amadeus (1984). Because the story is presented as a flashback, it is tinged with sadness and culpable nostalgia.Following the death of his beloved wife (Caroline Sihol), Sainte Colombe retires to his country estate, into a life of austerity and isolation. He dedicates his life to the upbringing of his two young daughters, Madeleine (Violaine Lacroix) and Toinette (Nadège Teron), and personally conducts their musical education. He has a small wooden hut built in his garden, where he withdraws to play his viol and wallows in the souvenirs of his dead wife. From time to time, when his playing is particularly good, she appears to him. As the daughters reach their teens, Madeleine and Toinette (now interpreted by Anne Brochet and Carole Richert, respectively) have become accomplished viol players themselves, and performances by the Sainte Colombe trio are heavily in demand. Following his attendance at one of these performances, Monsieur de Caignet (Yves Gasc), a member of King Louis XIVs inner circle, recommends Sainte Colombe to the King, but the artist, in harsh words, declines the royal privilege to the dismay of the Kings envoy.One day, nineteenyear-old Marin Marais (Guillaume Depardieu) shows up at Sainte Colombes door, requesting that he be accepted as a pupil. In spite of an impressive audition, the Master rejects him, to the great disappointment of both Madeleine and Toinette. In a short but cold and biting pronouncement, Sainte Colombe tells him to go to play at the Court, where his undeniable talent will be most appreciated, but he, Marais, will never know what real music is all about, and what it means to be a musician: You make music, Monsieur, you are not a musician. Nevertheless, Sainte Colombe tells Marais to come back in one month. After that time, Marais returns and he becomes Sainte Colombes pupil, for at least a short while, until the Masters next temper tantrum, following which he is told to leave and never return.Madeleine helps Marais by secretly teaching him all that her father has taught her, and in the process, becomes his mistress. Although Marais has returned to Versailles, with Madeleines help, he is able to hide beneath the wooden shack to which Sainte Colombe retreats at night to play and reminisce about his beloved wife. He listens to the Masters improvisations and learns his technique. Eventually, Sainte Colombe discovers the pair under the hut listening, and this time Marais is banished for good.Madeleine is pregnant, but Marais, increasingly addicted to the glamour of the Court, soon forgets the Sainte Colombe family. Madeleine delivers a still-born baby, following which, overwhelmed with grief at being abandoned, she falls ill. Sainte Colombe sends for Marais to come to his dying daughters bedside. Marais obliges, but he is cold and distant, even cruel in his remarks. After his departure, Madeleine hangs herself.Marais realizes that Sainte Colombe was correct in asserting that, in spite of the virtuosity, Marais music is simply empty. He becomes so obsessed with his failing that he again sneaks back at night under the wooden shack to hear Sainte Colombe play, hoping to finally uncover his Masters secrets. However, the Master is so despondent over the loss of his daughter that he no longer plays. Marais waits for three years, spending countless nights in vain under the shack, until one night Sainte Colombe finally plays. Marais reveals himself and Sainte Colombe invites him into his intimacy: Monsieur, could I ask you for a last lesson? to which Sainte Colombe answers, Monsieur, can I attempt a first lesson? Finally, Monsieur de Sainte Colombe will allow himself to enter posterity, as he is now ready to teach Marais and to pass on all his musical knowledge to a next generation.They play together, and the music acts as a bridge to the present, as Marais is finishing his story to a mesmerized audience. The ghostly image of the now deceased Monsieur de Sainte Colombe appears to him. He tells his pupil, who had become his equal, if not surpassed him, I feel pride in having taught you.

Tags: romantic

Review:
This film knows, but if you don't have some inkling of the answer, you may come away from this film with nothing more than an interesting story set in the music world of 17th century France.
Interrelated, indivisible, and necessary to each other for the severe lessons they teach us as a result of the strength of their inseparable unity.This primary point was driven home time after time in Les Matins to the point where even the most abject hardheart would soon feel the story's full impact, that the shallow and mediocre fluff of life, no matter how rich, no matter how acclaimed, cannot provide an offset to the bitter agony of lost perfect love, sublime adoration that is well understood in this particular case never to come again to Sainte-Columbe and would surely be less welcome to him in his suffering than would tortured death, no matter how sweet that new love might be to another person less soul-stricken.
His would be a death that ended our collective hope in the discovery of more elegiac beauty in any future music he could have written, but it served to force us to appreciate more fully the few soulful and heart rending pieces he painfully but adoringly accomplished while writing at his personal creative zenith, his apogee in, and as a result of, paramount human suffering.
This is a common theme told in many stories through the years, yes, but it is as real and stunning in this film as was ever done in any medium.Les Matins is the best film story of an artist I have ever seen due to the honesty in which it understands and conveys to the audience the inescapable agony felt by a fatally tortured, artistic genius, and how that agony moved him to write his greatest music..
The brainchild of director Alain Corneau, writer Pascal Quignard, and musician Jordi Savall this film integrates the visual with the historicodramatic and the music that created the idea and bathes it in the most sensuously beautiful cinematography of a period (the 17th century) by Yves Angelo who is given the sets and design and costumes by Bernard Vézat and Corinne Jorry that create image after image of masterful still life.
The total integration of the work of these masters is the plinth on which the actors offer the memory of two famous composers in French classical music history.Saint-Colombe (Jean-Pierre Marielle) is a viol player and composer whose wife (Caroline Sihol) dies young leaving him to raise his two daughters young Madeleine (Violaine Lacroix) and young Toinette (Nadège Teron)whom he teaches his art of viol de gamba performance while sequestering himself and his girls in the countryside.
Into their garden comes the young handsome son of a shoemaker, Marin Marais (Guillaume Depardieu, the son of Gerard Depardieu) who commits to learning the viol and eventually becomes a court musician only to fall in love with Saint-Colombe's elder daughter Madeleine (Anne Brochet) whom he eventually leaves for the glories of the court.
As an adult (Gérard Depardieu pere) he realizes his error and returns to the Saint-Colombe sanctuary where he learns the true meaning of music as being something beyond words and thus something beyond human.In the course of this quiet little film and in the dramatic lighting of the production design we hear the music of Couperin, Lully, as well as compositions by Marais and Saint-Colombe.
Then listen to the soundtrack and weep along to beautifully-reproduced baroque chamber music.The story is slow-paced and lovingly-shot, and deals with love, talent and labour being lost on the road to fame and fortune in the big city.
(Not to mention one dramatically smashed viol, a suicide and a lot of crushed peaches.)Though the film's big-name stars are the Depardieus pere et fils, the musical director, Jordi Savall, and the Concert des Nations should be given an equal billing!.
This shot, about as minimalist as you can get, manages to suggest so much: the actual scene itself (Depardieu as Marais giving a music lesson in Royal Chambers to a number of inept students), his own life and sense of failure, aging, dissipation of talent and emotional paralysis despite the signs of status and wealth, the intimations of a past and a place so alien to the modern and showy Court as to be on a different plane of time and space altogether.
First of all, it is a biopic; not really of Marais at all, but his one time teacher, Sainte-Colombe, solitary genius of the viol, and possibly the first Romantic artist, someone who composed not for Royalty or riches, but fore himself, from his own soul, alone.
Depardieu's narration has the unadorned, measured simplicity of fairy tales, and the unmarked accumulation of events gives a timeless feel, one seperate from the historically verifiable Court.Further, the film doesn't try to cram in the whole of Sainte-Colombe's life.
It is very good about the marginalisation of equally talented women in this world of obsessive male art, where the only useful female is a dead one; and the brief, comical treatment of arbitrary monarchy is as pointed as anything in 'Ridicule'.The other genre the film belongs to is the dreaded costume drama, that puffed up fashion parade of bourgeois aspiration, where the allusion to people who used their brains is enough to satisfy audiences who refuse to use theirs; where cufflinks and frills are creamily fetishised, and everything else - plot, character, ideas, subtext - is a mere mannequin.
A strict disciplinarian, he forces his daughters to follow the example he has set them, and perhaps this is the reason for Madeleine's later sadness.All in all, I felt that the film was a touching tribute to the sadness and grief that make true love so beautiful..
Poignant, bittersweet biography, told via flashback by French Royal Court composer, Marin Marais (portrayed by Gerard Depardieu); of his legendary musical mentor, Sainte Colombe (Jean-Pierre Marielle).
The story unravels in a process like the blooming of a flower -- consistent, organic, and fascinating, albeit a shade slow.Secondly, any renaissance/baroque music fans should see this film merely for its delightful scoring.
Though early European music may be an acquired taste, "Tous les matins" presents the viola de gamba in all its expressive glory, foreshadowing works like Bach's well-known cello suites.
If the quasi-deep attempts to address the definition of music bother you (as they occasionally bothered me), the complementation of the music and the film's pacing will captivate you nonetheless.And offhand, fans of Julian Sands (especially in 'Impromptu')will get a kick out of comparing him to Guillaume Depardieu as the young Marin Marais...;).
Little known 17th Century viol player and composer Monsieur de Sainte Colombe regarded public performance as an act that corrupted the purity of music.
Since his wife's death, he had lived in isolation with his two daughters Madeleine and Toinette until a young musician, Marin Marais, convinces him to teach him viol.
The acting, as one would expect of French films in the the 1980s and 1990s, is consummate, and the characterization is totally convincing: the first five minutes of 'Tous les Matins du Monde'are memorable, the very best of Gerard Depardieu and French cinematography and music.
Possession of ineffable, love like ladder between two different worlds, mystery of touching, forms of freedom and meekness, ambition of young man for who the victory is a deep exploration of life's taste, for who the price is more little in perspective of luxurious victory against the others are elements of subtle tale in which illusion is the heart of every existence.Monsieur de Sainte-Colombe is not only historical character or legendary viola's master, but he is European image of a Zen teacher in a century of flavors, lights and pleasure, sophisticated hypocrisy and Roi-Soleil.
Tous Les matins Du Monde is extremely delightful,satisfying and fulfilled not only as colors, frames, photography, music, calligraphy ,but also as script,dialogs,acting.Corneau's proficiency of the plastic is amazing.The calming images are not a less important "character" in this movie than the music.Some colors are delightfully warm;others are cold.
Its Callophily and calmness of mind is that of the Dutch painters.(Some of the frames are direct,explicit quotations and do homage to their pictorial sources.)Still,the "substance" is meaningful and as rich as the "style" (if this dichotomy could be acceptable).Tous Les matins Du Monde is not at all empty formalism,but an inquiry into the heart's depths.This depth is not fake;its secret warmth touches the heart;the things said about music are not conventional.The plastic is Dutch.Ste. Colombe is sullen,Dumpish,brutal,peeved and surly,but his daughters (Manon and the younger Toinette) are sunny and sweet-tempered.Madeleine/Manon's eyes are piercing.Marais is a vulgarian;ambitious,cruel,in-satiate,he has,at first,no far-sightedness,but is greedy and trivial;hot-blooded,but superficial.Little by little,through music,through life,he humanizes.The final,touching "Marais",played by THE Depardieu,is humble;truly humble.Now,he tastes,he sips the essential.(It is very relevant that both Marielle and G.
Depardieu have sensual,earthly faces.)He gives his mind to music.This Marais is the one called by the very ill Manon who wants to pay him out.Ste. Colombe puts confidence in Marais,after he gave it him hot several times.Who would have thought that Marais and Ste. Colombe will come to be,now,two of a kind?The contemplation,the deepening gets the concreteness of an act of feeding.Marais meets two exceptional human beings:Monsieur De Ste. Colombe,and his elder daughter,"Manon" (Mrs. Anne Brochet).Marais' misfortune is to be unable to love people.Manon's misfortune is to be too able to love.
Ste. Colombe's happiness is to love (his wife,played by Mrs. Caroline Sihol).It is obvious that Tous Les matins Du Monde is a movie about the human heart,about the hidden coherence of the life,about the secret roundness of history when life is lived in search of objective and firm values.Tous Les matins Du Monde is one of the very few movies successful in expressing a highly developed interior life.Horrid things are narrated in a suave,heart-rending way.The music we listen to,the plastic quality of the frames we see,the acting we watch,the dialogs we hear--The movie's meanings are shown,and don't need to be explained here.Mrs. Anne Brochet acted in Cyrano De Bergerac as well.Mistake not.
First you should go for the entire movie, so you know the story, and the second time you should close your eyes and turn up the volume in order to fully enjoy the fragile, but oh so beautiful music.
Still, the movie has more to offer than just the music, the story and the acting are nice as well and that's something I know more to tell about.This movie starts with an old Marin Marais who is listening to his orchestra that is rehearsing a composition by Monsieur de Sainte Colombe at the royal court in Versailles.
When he starts playing, all his memories about his time with the family de Sainte Colombe return and he starts telling everything: How he first met his master at the age of seventeen, how he fell in love with one of his daughters, how he became appointed to the court of Louis XIV, but never was seen as a real musician by his master...
He also tells them that Monsieur de Sainte Colombe had a special way of working and that his music had a special reason of existence for the man.
But he refused because his music wasn't intended for people who didn't understand the real meaning of it: remembering his beloved wife who died too soon.Despite the fact that in my opinion the Baroque period is probably the worst period in history when it comes to clothing and architecture - it's all much too pompous and over the top to my taste - I must say that it didn't bother me all that much in this movie.
The story is narrated by the opportunist  now old himself  as a confession, to a room full of his sycophantic music students at the court of Louis XIV (the character, Marin Marais was an actual composer of the time, as was the older man, M.
He tells them of a life spent in self-aware mediocrity next to an artist who possesses a purity and passion that can't be learned.This man is Marais's teacher – a fictionalized version of 17th-century musician Monsieur de Sainte-Colombe, who wrote great music for the viola.
In the end, which is the film's beginning, Marais is left with a life spent in pursuit of easy applause, asking his master's ghost for forgiveness.Tous les Matins du Monde is a rare film – capable of drawing us into a different consciousness, and helping us understand and appreciate something we had never contemplated before.
He lays in the wet, cold mud for a very long time, realizing that, accomplished musician that he is, he will never be able to come close to achieving the level of beauty, the level of excellence that is eminating from the cello of Monsieur de Sainte Columbe.I highly recommend this movie..
Nevertheless, the film is far less pleasure for the hearing impaired as the music is the real hot shot of this movie.
I think at that point, the camera threw up in its mouth."Tout les Matins du Monde" is little more than a rehash of "Amadeus" (made 6 years earlier), right down to the contrite voice-over by the hack who stole the glory of the *real* musical genius, the uneasy relationship between court musician and king, the contrived romance and so on.
Later, we see that, in maturity, after having lost his own true love (St. Colombe's daughter) Marin Marais has become a truly great musician.
This is a brilliant film about the life of Marin Marais and Ste Colombe.
de Saint Colombe, who outcasts himself from the Court and society, refuses to play in public and teach anybody who is not his daughters, and lives simply with his three daughters in their countryside manor, devoted to a simple strict and almost ascetic life.The script is very good as analyzes the opposition between fame-quality in Art and in the personal life of an artist, and between music as a bunch of sounds and music as a piece of art.
If you believe, as I do, that music surpasses all form of human expression, let yourself be seduced by the magnificent sounds of Marais and St. Colombe which permeate this film..
In his grief he builds a small house in his garden into which he moves to dedicate his life to music and his two young daughters Madeleine and Toinette, avoiding the outside world.The first thing that struck me about this film was the title.
A reclusive, enigmatic French musician rejects invitations to play at the court of Louis VIII, preferring a life of solitude and study after the death of his wife, emerging only to teach (reluctantly) the pursuit of pure music to a brash, ambitious pupil.
Most of the film, exploring the conviction, dedication, and loneliness of his mentor, unfolds in flashback, with Depardieu's character played by the actor's son Guillaume, making his big-screen debut.Of course few things are likely to be more pretentious than an art film about Art, but there's enough plot here to suggest an austere 17th century soap opera (a seduction, a suicide), plus an integrity altogether lacking from other, similar costume dramas (most of it was shot using only natural sound and available light, often only candlelight).
I also thought the storyline was irksome and sexist: Madeleine and Toinette are talented musicians, but the idea that they might want to do anything with their music is never mentioned, although a few real-life female composers from the time period exist.
This film consists of the memories of the famous musician, Marin Marais (Gerard Depardieu), reminiscing about an even greater musician, Monsieur de Sainte Colombe.
Now understand, these were real French musicians from the 17th and 18th century, but apparently very, very little is known about Colombe and the story is from a novel consisting of lots of conjecture by Pascal Quignard...so don't accept this as the gospel!Monsieur de Sainte Colombe (Jean-Pierre Marielle) is a very strange man--an angry weirdo, certainly.
Into this very mundane world comes a young Marin Marais (played here by Gerard's real life son, Guillaume).
The film relates the real story of Monsieur de Sainte Colombe, one of the most renowned viol players of the 17th Century, with a few fictitious anecdotes added to make it more interesting.The dialogue is simple, using our contemporary vocabulary, but the turn of the phrases are typical of 17th Century parlance, whose style recalls the writings of the French dramatists of that epoch, like Pierre Corneille or Jean Racine.
Savall was careful in his choices of the pieces to be played by the two characters in order to illustrate their different approaches to music.Gerard Depardieu's son, Guillaume, just starting in his acting career, interprets Marin Marais as a young man.
This requires the outstanding acting of the two actor-musicians, especially during their music-playing scenes.The film is an ode to the inner beauty and the meaning of music, and its main theme is the love of music.
However, Savall chose "Le tombeau des regrets," the piece Sainte Colombe composed for his dead wife, for Marais' "last/first" lesson from his Master, which they play together in a mutual understanding.
For Marais it takes a long time to understand what music is about, but at the end of the film he realizes what Sainte-Colombe has been trying to teach him.
Tous les matins du monde is the story of two musicians, Marin Marais (played by the noted actor, Gérard Depardieu) and his mentor, Monsieur de Sainte-Colombe, during the time of King Louis IV in the 17th century.
Tous les matins du monde is an extremely elegant film which features some great baroque music.
The young man is more interested in revenge than music, in getting to where he needs to go than the hearts he has to break along the way.Writers Pascal Quignard and Alain Corneau (the film is directed by Corneau) thrust de Saint Colombe on viewers out of the apparent belief that a great artist must be cruel, oafish, unknown and unhappy.