The Best Offer: Not Enough Sting in the Tale!

Writer/director Giuseppe Tornatore's The Best Offer is an Italian film in English with Australian and Dutch leads. Geoffrey Rush plays Virgil Oldman with Sylvia Hoeks as Claire Ibbetson. Virgil is a top-end art and antiques dealer with mysophobia - a hygiene freak. His signature gloves play an important role in the mystery. Rush carries off the role of the eccentric with his usual ease.

On the other hand (no pun intended) Claire seems to suffer two fears: agoraphobia (open spaces) and scopophobia (being seen). It's not the stuff of which romance is usually made. Rush carries off the role of eccentric with his usual ease. It is hard to tell whether Hoeks' performance is wooden or it stems from the character.

My biggest disappointment with this movie is that its surprise climax is too easy to guess. Its overly long 131 minutes probably contribute to this. Too much free time to speculate! Perhaps the subtlety was lost in translation. The inclusion of an historic automaton as plot device has echoes of Martin Scorsese' Hugo.

Like Rush, Donald Sutherland is well cast as the roguish Billy Whistler. He is as well-worn as his character's unimaginative name. Come to think of it so is Virgil's surname. Jim Sturgess adds the youngman stud factor as Robert. The ambiguity of his occupation of artificer is another of the hints. Anyway, enough spoilers already.

The high quality photography, sets and costumes give the film a charm and elegance that help to redeem its rather pedestrian plot. If you try to block out the hints and blatant clues, The Best Offer is an agreeable enough experience.

In Search of Beethoven's genius

You don’t have to be a fan of classical music to know and have enjoyed Ludwig van Beethoven’s music. Whether it’s Symphony No.9 in Clockwork Orange or the 5th in Picnic at Hanging Rock or numerous others movie scores, it has popular appeal beyond the concert hall or classic CD collection. Moonlight Sonata, Ode to Joy and many more are generally recognised.

As a follow-up to In Search of Mozart, Phil Grabsky brings us a monumental 139 minute tribute to Ludwig van Beethoven. In Search of Beethoven is detailed, informative, entertaining and thought provoking with a comprehensive, chronological introduction to his life and his works. There are 55 performances from some of the world’s best orchestras and artists.

However, it’s too long for the cinema. Long enough to make a worthy three part TV series. There are too many talking heads. Perhaps Grabsky didn’t want to offend any of the multitudes of experts by leaving them out.

It’s beautifully filmed but relies heavily on the clichés of this documentary genre. It isn’t easy to match the aural majesty with enough visual splendours. Inevitably it falls back on: orchestras in every state of rehearsal or performance; close ups of pianists, cellists and other performers; the rear view of numerous conductors' torsos; paintings interspersed with modern day exteriors of Vienna and similar locales. He also seems to favour chopping off the tops of heads unless they are entrants in the competition for the most disheveled male Beet hairstyle.

Fidelio, Beethoven’s only finished opera, brings some much needed drama and visual engagement.

Juliet Stevenson’s narration is crisp and fresh, perhaps too detached at times given the passionate nature of the subject.

Mercifully Grabsky has steered clear of re-enactments. Nor has the use of David Dawson as Beethoven’s voice been overdone. In fact more of the story in Beethoven's own words might have helped our understanding of his true character. The filmmakers’ claim that it uncovers the myth of the “heroic, tormented figure battling to overcome his tragic fate, struck down by deafness, who searched for his 'immortal beloved' but remained unmarried. It delves beyond the image of the tortured, cantankerous, unhinged personality, to reveal someone quite different and far more interesting.”

However, this search for the real person falls short. We do not really get into Beethoven’s heart or mind. In fact we learn more about his drinking habits than his attitudes to women, marriage or children. There is little revealing material from his own writing or those who were close to him such as his nephew or his romantic interests.

Don’t be put off. Watch this one for the joy of the music.

Greenaway Reconstructs Leonardo's Last Supper

Peter Greenaway's Installation Art Captures Melbourne

Leonardo's Last Supper has come to Melbourne for the International Arts Festival this year. It's one of Peter Greenaway's image technology installation art projects. It follows the success of his multimedia event 'Rembrandt's The Nightwatch at the Rijksmuseum' in Amsterdam in 2006.

Greenaway calls these art forms, "speculative painting-cinema dialogues". Greenaway has reinvented himself as a new Da Vinci. Had Leonardo been alive today, "an investigation into the continuity and correspondence between the language of painting and the language of cinema would have been obligatory for him".

Da Vinci Cloned

Unfortunately it could not be the original masterpiece. However the reproduction is cleverly forged, in both senses of the word. It is claimed to be, "a perfect, three-dimensional sculptural clone of Milan's crumbling, 510-year-old chapel wall and painting."

The half hour show alternates between caressing and interrogating the painting. The micro-accuracy of the the video projections is astounding. Today's audio-visual presentations are certainly light-years ahead of the old slide projectors.

Is Cinema dead?

Ground-breaking film director Greenaway declared cinema dead as early as 2003. This seeming about-face may have been a consequence of his 1999 movie, and perhaps last true cinema production, 8 1/2 Women. It received a drubbing from most reviewers at the time.

His cinema triumphs include the beautiful The Draughtsman's Contract where his early training as a painter brought magnificent scene scapes to this period piece. Drowning by Numbers drew on his skills as a film editor in constructing its elaborate storyline. The Cook, the Thief, his Wife & her Lover became a cult movie very quickly. The Pillow Book is perhaps his best film, as he mixed media to telling effect. It weaves traditional Chinese and Japanese poetry and calligraphy into an exploration of sensuality by its extensive use of body painting.

Last Supper Highlights

There are many highlights during the half-hour with Jesus Christ and his twelve apostles. The exploration of the hands is particularly striking. The opposite wall hosts a cascade of highly detailed close-ups of the painting's grainy texture. It reveals a fascinating perspective that is
usually hidden from an audience. The painting itself started to disintegrate not long after it was finished in the 1490s. Since the effects of numerous restorations have been removed, The Last Supper is now close to the original except of course for its fragmented state.

The audience crowds around a table of food and drink dividing the installation room. Bread and wine are the essentials.

Nine Classic Paintings Revisited

The other art works in the proposed Nine Classic Paintings Revisited series are: Veronese's The Wedding At Cana, Picasso's Guernica, Velasquez's Las Meninas, Seurat's La Grande Jatte, Monet's The Water Lilies - Nympheas, Jackson Pollock's One: Number 31, and Michelangelo's The Last Judgement.

For the multitudes that can't attend one of the original venues, hopefully there will be traveling versions that match the high quality of this Melbourne event.

Peter Greenaway is performing the last rites for the cinema a little prematurely. But it's a performance that's well worth attending.

(This article first appeared on Associated Content)