Copying Beethoven 2006

Moira MacDonald, Seattle Times: Always an intelligent presence on screen, Harris here embraces the challenge of showing us the man behind the wall of music. Read more

Michael Wilmington, Chicago Tribune: A movie with some flaws but also with moments of beauty and intensity most other films can't match. Read more

Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader: Agnieszka Holland directs with obvious feeling rather than cynicism, and I was swept away by it despite the story's anachronisms. Read more

Richard Roeper, Ebert & Roeper: Someday someone will make a great movie about an immortal composer, but for now the best movie about any Beethoven I've ever seen stars a Saint Bernard. Read more

Nathan Rabin, AV Club: If Harris scores another Academy Award nomination for his role, it'll be for the quantity rather than the quality of his acting. Read more

Richard Nilsen, Arizona Republic: It's a pointless movie, except for Harris. Read more

Wesley Morris, Boston Globe: Harris saunters through this toasty little piece of biographical fiction in love with the part's fixins'. Read more

Carina Chocano, Los Angeles Times: It reduces Beethoven to a moldy cliche. Read more

Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly: As LvB, Harris is intense, and intensely bewigged. Read more

James C. Taylor, L.A. Weekly: Da-da-da-dumb. Read more

Gene Seymour, Newsday: If you're going to tackle Ludwig van Beethoven, you've got to go as hard and high as he did. All this movie does is flounder and flail around his tempestuous spirit. Read more

Lisa Rose, Newark Star-Ledger: It works on an aesthetic level but it's uneven as a drama. Read more

Jack Mathews, New York Daily News: It was audacious of the filmmakers to imagine they could build a story and characters around the creation of the Ninth Symphony that would play as dramatically as the music. Read more

James Berardinelli, ReelViews: I have nothing against historical fiction: books or movies using real characters in situations that didn't happen. However, one would hope in such cases that the authors would have a story worth telling. Read more

Andrew O'Hehir, Salon.com: So many of the films I see lack any obvious passion, or sense of theatrical flair, and whatever its flaws, Copying Beethoven does not stint on those. Read more

Ruthe Stein, San Francisco Chronicle: You may walk out of Copying Beethoven humming the movie. But that's not the same as singing its praises. Read more

James Adams, Globe and Mail: There's a lot of Romantic hokum here that probably won't play well with many postmodernist sensibilities. Read more

David Jenkins, Time Out: The direction from Polish New Waver Agnieszka Holland feels more like she's testing a new camera than attempting to capture the nuances of the artistic process, and if we're to believe the script, then all great art derives 'from the gut'. Read more

Leslie Felperin, Variety: Its fictional frame about a woman copyist helping the maestro complete the masterwork hits too many duff notes. Read more

Luke Y. Thompson, Village Voice: Beethoven turns out to be like every obnoxious self-absorbed creative type you've ever met Read more

Stephen Hunter, Washington Post: The movie is completely beguiling, and it delivers joy, the beautiful spark of the gods. Read more