A Disappointing Continuation

The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.

I was disappointed with this "film" for many reasons. First, it was impossible to understand the interviews with Leon Theremin. The version I watched had no English subtitles, so most of the last third of this "film" was useless. Also, they interviewed a woman with short, brown hair that spoke Russian with no subtitles. Another problem is that most of these people are not introduced or have their names on the screen. I had no idea who these people were and why they were being interviewed. (My opinion is the director didn't know why these people were being interviewed either.) Anyway, the last third of this "film" just drags on and on because you don't who the people are, and you can't understand what they're saying. It's so bad, it's really annoying.Another problem is the look and feel of this "film". It was made in the early 90's, but has the look and feel of a 70's documentary. It appears that the director had no preconceived plan of what he wanted, so he went out and filmed all this footage and then tried to make a story out of it when he got back to the editing suite. I've worked on documentaries, and that's NOT how you should do it. The director had 15-20 years to improve upon the look of his "film", but did not. This leads me to think that he was very inexperienced. The "film" looks very amateurish and dated. Is it all bad? No. The first 2/3 are fairly interesting and tell a good (if disjointed) story of Theremin and his inventions. I loved the performances by Clara Rockmore. They were moving and beautiful. All the archive footage was pretty cool. And Brain Wilson's interview is something you just have to experience for yourself - it's classic! I also enjoyed the interviews with Robert Moog - very enlightening. All in all, this is a decent "film" (God, I hate it when they say "A Film by ______" in the credits. It sounds so pompous!) But, it suffers from a lack of direction which makes the last third so bad, it's painful. Plus, we can't understand what happened after Theremin was kidnapped and brought back to Russia. It's really frustrating.

The theremin is one of the first electronic musical instruments invented and I can't say I was ever crazy about it. I always thought of it as something used to add an eerie quality to certain psychological films like Hitchcock's "Spellbound" or science-fiction films such as "The Day the Earth Stood Still".As it turned out, the theremin had an enormous influence on the later history of electronic music.Named after its creator Léon Theramin (Lev Sergievich Terman), it was treated by others as a serious musical instrument especially when played by its greatest exponent, Clara Rockmore, She, as a matter of fact, happened to be the sister of my last piano teacher, Nadia Reisenberg, who often accompanied her but I knew nothing about this during my piano studies.One of the problems with this documentary would have been very simple to remedy: it is usually impossible to know who is being shown without a caption though that could usually be worked out by the context. In the case of Clara Rockmore, there was a family resemblance and Nicolas Slonimsky had a familiar face. But another problem has been mentioned often enough: the aged Theremin's speech in the English language is incomprehensible and should have been subtitled (Only when he spoke Russian were subtitles included.). In fact, an English subtitles option would have been very welcome throughout.I also think, in view of various questions which have come up, that the "abduction" of Theremin from the United States in 1938 seems too much of a whitewash. In view of his invention of a bugging device which was used for espionage against the United States, one wonders where the real allegiance of the inventor lay.It was thought, for many years, that Theremin had been executed by the Soviet government but in a real "believe it or not" story, he turned up late in life and eventually went back to the U.S. for a time. His unexpected reunion with Rockmore made for a very touching ending for the documentary.Another not very user-friendly DVD and, I would hope if it is ever reissued, that these problems could be remedied.

A marvellous film with a story so incredible, it's hard to believe you've never heard of it before. An absolute must for all documentary and music types. The revelations are priceless and well...can't give it away. See it!

Spoilers herein.What lovely women! What strange political machinations, politics of country, music, science, history. What vile conspiracies.What a story about how a new sound gets transformed from its intent as a source of beauty to the very icon of spookiness. Sound is like food, perceived as we learn.The pathos of a branch of evolution choked.How cool that Moog has the pocket full of pens. The early Theremin the white lab coat, and the old one the tape on the glasses. And this has Brian Wilson too! Anything with him is worth spending time with.