In this slow-paced, thoughtful, and charming documentary — now some thirty years old — Balint Vazsonyi and Anthony Qualye explore the visceral sights of Beethoven’s world, while also exploring the depths of his restless and tormented mind. Vazonyi, a world-class pianist and master performer of Beethoven’s sonatas, and Quayle, a famed actor and director (including of Shakespeare), are the perfect duo for this subdued yet powerful film, Beethoven: A Portrait.
Many people — maybe even most — are aware of the major facets of Beethoven’s life. He was a brazen, mildy brutish and unkempt composer who, despite losing his hearing at any early age, went on to compose some of the most profound and moving music ever created. He is an immortal not only in the pantheon of musical gods, but of art and human expression as a whole.
But in case one is hardly aware of Beethoven, the man’s reputation and aura come through immediately in the opening scene, as Quayle reads part of the poet Grillparzer’s soaring funeral oration for Beethoven (d. 1827). Those new to Beethoven also learn the basic biographical details of the composer’s life.
But the force of this superb documentary lies not in presenting an abbreviated biography, but rather in showing the physical world that Beethoven inhabited. From his birthplace of Bonn, to some of the many places he frequented in Vienna, to the “magic world” of the Rhine (in Vazsonyi’s words), we see, in part, what Beethoven himself saw and took in.
As a young man in his early 20s, Beethoven came to the bustling city of Vienna, where arts and music flourished to an extent greater than virtually anywhere in Europe. The many grand sights of Vienna — shown in the film with beautiful, unhurried shots — were of a different kind and degree than Beethoven had experienced in small-town Bonn. And it was in Vienna that Beethoven struggled, developed, and persevered into a successful, respected, and envelope-pushing composer.
But of course an obstacle lay on the horizon, one which Beethoven could not avoid, no matter how badly he wished it would pass, and no matter how much the humiliating pangs of its cruel reality penetrated the vulnerable inner-world of the composer. That cruel pang was the horror of progressive hearing loss, which would one day be total.
It brought Beethoven to the depths of despair in 1802, when he was just a man in his early thirties. It prompted him in the fall of that year to write what is referred to as the Heiligenstadt Testament — an (unsent) letter to his brothers. It’s a letter full of tumult and sadness, dejection and utter hopelessness — of someone seemingly on the cusp of letting go from this world for good.
But Beethoven hung on. He did not, ultimately, give into the anguish or the tortured ramifications of a musician losing that most vital of senses.
Along with exploring the sights of Beethoven’s world, the film also explores Beethoven’s psychology, not least when it comes to Beethoven’s loss of hearing. As with any attempted exploration into the inner-life of someone else, there’s the risk of making poorly drawn conclusions, or simply bringing one’s own psychology and projecting it onto the subject. Vazsonyi is entirely aware of both these things, and posits his speculations accordingly. He insights are cautiously offered, and are interesting to consider.
It’s worth keeping in mind, too, that Vazsonyi knows Beethoven’s music intimately, and it’s hard not to think that such deep familiarity gives him an entrance into the mind of the composer that very few of us can have. In any case, Vazsonyi’s various conversations with Quayle about Beethoven’s inner-life — including the idea that Beethoven perhaps viewed himself as Caliban, from Shakespeare’s The Tempest — makes for some entertaining and intriguing scenes in the film.
In the end, though, it almost hardly matters how Beethoven perceived himself — or, to put it slightly different, it hardly matters whether we know how he perceived himself. What we have and know is his music: its power, its magic, and its ability to speak to each and everyone of us, in both moments of joy and deep pain.
Spectatio 