Spotlight

Spotlight Date: 21-February-10
Spoiler Rating: Medium

The Red Violin (1999*)

The instrument in The Red Violin is a seventeenth-century masterpiece with haunted origins that wends its way through Europe and Asia and lands in North America as the twentieth century comes to a close. The movie comprises a quintet of stories about people who come into contact with it, brought to life by a multinational cast speaking Italian, German, French, Chinese, and English. The settings are lush and exotic, the soundtrack fittingly lovely, and the overall effect quite mesmerizing.

An element of fatalism binds the stories through a hokey device involving tarot cards, but a stronger, more compelling theme provides another link. Each character's connection to the violin describes a different type of love. Initially, the Italian craftsman's loss of his wife imbues the violin with its distinctive color and, perhaps, its destiny. Although he knows it is his masterpiece, his grief apparently prevents him from advertising it as such, for it quickly becomes the uncelebrated property of an Austrian monastery-cum-orphanage. Decades later it meets its match in a child prodigy whose talent attracts a Viennese gentleman with big dreams but small means (Jean-Luc Bideau). As the man grooms his protégé for an audition that could change their lives, the boy's attachment to the instrument (his version of a security blanket) impresses his patron as much as his vulnerability and miraculous gift.

Thanks to generations of gypsies, the violin travels over time to England where a flamboyant soloist (Jason Flemyng) recognizes its worth. In contrast to the domestic devotion of the violin-maker towards his wife, this genius equates inspiration with erotic love. His music is intrinsically coupled with the sex he enjoys with his mistress (Greta Scacchi). When she leaves to pursue her own muse, he and his art fall to pieces, giving the instrument a new layer of dramatic mystique. Still, it disappears from the public eye again, reemerging in China during the Communist Revolution. In what might be my favorite vignette, a woman (Sylvia Chang) chafes under the obligations of a good comrade when she realizes they mean destroying all things European. Anything related to classical music is anathema to almost everyone she knows, including her husband, so it takes an act of courage to preserve the violin she inherited from her mother. Her love addresses universal beauty sacrificed to cultural hysteria.

The film rounds itself out by explaining the significance of a modern-day auction in Montreal where the violin is being sold. Samuel L. Jackson headlines this section as an expert called in to assess the auction house's wares. Upon recognizing the fabled red violin, the holy grail of his life, he becomes consumed by the need to possess it. Family, career, and ethics fade to insignificance as he contemplates artistic perfection. The movie implies that this passion makes him the most suitable owner of the violin, since most of the others who bid for it are loutish or simply rich, which is often used as a sign of shallowness. Of course, the instrument's suitors are unaware or unconcerned with the pain it has witnessed in the past and may carry with it into the future. The story of the red violin and the love it evokes keeps going after the screen goes dark.

*U.S. release date

Copyright © 2010 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.