Surprisingly incoherent and boring

Most undeservingly overhyped movie of all time??

Let's be realistic.

Simple and well acted, it has tension enough to knot the stomach.

This movie made me feel....well....what am I trying to say...nauseated.Every cast read like they were trying their worst, including Harris, who is a good actor and was fantastic in Pollack. Music insertions during the entire movie were inappropriate. Beethoven is one of most beloved geniuses but not a single actor or scene depicted such brilliance and utter tragedy. Some of the scene were near (poorly executed) copies of scenes from other books/movies.The movie dabbles in a maze of confusing themes: I struggled to follow the ever-changing theme and constantly distracted by ridiculously poor - acting, writing, scenery, music segment choices and placements, and relentless one-liners.I was determined to continue watching the movie. In fact, I watched it twice in a row. And the most important and perhaps one scene that can help common folks, like myself, to look into the soul of brilliance, would have been during the "9th" concert scene. Yet, I was entirely disappointed with the lack of synchronization between the music and conducting and unpreparedness of musical acting (pretending to look like a real musician) by the acting cast. Despite my best effort to understand and like the movie, even just a bit, this movie is a disaster. Maybe all is not lost - teachers can use this movie to show students how not-to-act and how not-to-direct/produce.I saw (twice). I cringed. I wrote my first movie review.

The music was, of course, marvelous.The story, however, is like some after-school special revisionist nonsense. One other reviewer felt that this was OK because it was a "fantasy." This begs the question why is it necessary to fantasize a story that would have been quite interesting if kept at least somewhat historically accurate? The performance of the 9th Symphony was quite good, allowing for the silly thesis that Beethoven had to be rescued by Anna due to his deafness and only she could stand out of sight pretending to conduct so he could mimic her. Anna saves the day. And therein lies the problem, the story is really about the fictional Anna and anything to do with Beethoven or his music is sacrificed in the process. I doubt many children would sit through this but if they do, they and the impressionable adults who prefer fantasy to reality will probably carry the fiction away as fact, along with other cinematic fabrications that treat historical reality with contempt.Rather than allowing the audience to watch the orchestra during the performance, which might have been interesting, the camera keeps shifting back and forth between Beethoven drunkenly swaying back and forth while supposedly keeping an eye on Anna and Anna swaying back and forth while appearing to suffer from motion sickness. An iTunes download of the music played in a dark room would have been more entertaining.The acting was mixed. Some performances, mainly by the supporting cast, were reasonably good while the others were borderline deplorable. With the New York accents, poorly developed erratic characterizations and Americanized dialogue & behavior, I kept thinking it would have been better done as a full-length cartoon. Maybe Mickey Mouse as Beethoven and Minnie as Anna, and Donald Duck as Karl. "Fantasia" was a pretty good musical fantasy too and the acting more believable.

This is a movie about Ludwig von Beethoven for dumb people who've never heard of Ludwig von Beethoven. Why dumb people who've never heard of Beethoven would ever want to watch a film about him is something that should have been asked before this production ever got started.Anna Holtz (Diane Kruger) is a young student of music composition who's been sent to Vienna in 1824 to assist the famed maestro, Beethoven (Ed Harris). She is to be his copyist, taking his scribbled notes and rewriting it into something that can be distributed to musicians. The aging and almost deaf Beethoven is just days away from the premiere of his 9th Symphony and he's still writing it. That's the set up. What follows from that is, almost measure for measure, every cliché you ever see in one of these stories about a famous old guy and the young woman who admires him. He's impossibly difficult and abusive. She stands up to him. He comes to need her more than he admits to himself. She's the only one who stands by him in his declining years. Yadda, yadda, yadda.There are only two things of interest in Copying Beethoven. One is that you could use it as a class film for really stupid music students. It's less a story about Beethoven's life and music and more exercise in characters appearing on screen to plainly and awkwardly recite certain facts about the great genius. If you watch this movie, you'll come away having heard quite a lot of basic information about Beethoven toward the tail end of his musical career. The other interesting thing about Copying Beethoven is that it is a good reminder of how artists of any sort getting rich off their work is a very recent phenomenon. Creative types used to be dependent on the support of wealthy patrons, who generally didn't pay them that much. Here's Beethoven, who was famous for his music in his own life, yet he's living barely better than an upper middle class existence with a small apartment in a run down Vienna building. It is only when artists were able to sell their work to the masses that they could become rich, as well as famous.The acting of Ed Harris, Diane Kruger and the rest of the cast is fine, but these are all shallowly drawn characters behaving in bluntly obvious ways. There's never any emotion shown or action taken that isn't also explained, either by the character in question or someone else. This film also spends at least 15 minutes show Beethoven conducting the first performance of his 9th Symphony. The music is great and all, but on the screen it comes off as the world's longest and most boring music video of all time.I don't know if this script got excessively dumbed down at some point, but unless you're looking for a remedial primer on Beethoven's later life, you can give this movie a pass.

First of all,I am musician and have studied countless hours of form, harmony and structure. This film captures all of that from beginning to end.Of course this is a fictional film filled with many ideas but the 'story' is found behind the music. I think choosing a woman to copy his music is simply a superb move by the creators of this film. I strongly believe Beethoven although deaf had help from an Angel, an Immortal Beloved who reflected his thoughts and his feelings back to him through his music.Ed Harris is exceptional. At times I am sure the old Maestro had taken over Ed Harris's body. Very, very believable and the way he handle the 'musician' side of things was outstanding.As you can see, this film touched me. The message from Beethoven is brought to us after the performance of the ninth (during the film.) The bridge that is destroyed, how many times have we had our dreams destroyed only for us to bounce back more powerfully? How many times have we had our composition destroyed by critics only for us to learn to write from the heart more? The world doesn't need another Beethoven, it needs your music, your pictures, your words, you find it in the silence.This film cannot be watched with only your eyes but felt through your soul. If you love Beethoven music, if you have looked for answers to the questions in his music, this film is for you.