Tchaikovsky

The film faithfully recounts the last twenty years of the Russian composer's life, bringing to the big screen a pathetic character, full of emotions and contrasts, like his last opera, "Pathétique," written after the news of his beloved's death. I greatly appreciated the visual quality of Margarita Pilikhina's cinematography and the arrangements, which earned Dimitri Tiomkin an Oscar.

Composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (Innokentiy Smoktunovskiy), after his latest success, faces a period of crisis due to constant criticism. During this period, he is supported by his faithful servant Aliosha (Evgeniy Leonov), his friend Nikolai Grigoryevich Rubinstein (Vladislav Strzhechik), a successful pianist, and above all by his patron Nadezhda Filaretovna von Meck (Antonina Shuranova), with whom he establishes a relationship of deep respect and love, without ever meeting, thanks to the intermediation of Wladyslaw Pachulski (Kirill Lavrov), the composer's former protégé, hired as a music teacher by the noblewoman.

Director Igor Talankin sets a slow, measured pace for the film, without delving into the psychological implications of the characters; the screenplay, by the director himself in collaboration with Yuriy Nagibin and Budimir Metalnikov, is very conventional, almost ceremonial and excessively paced, like a succession of episodes; the acting by the entire cast is quite good; personally, I preferred the suffering soul of Antonina Shuranova, pining for love, rather than the tormented one of Innokentiy Smoktunovskiy, constantly searching for immortality.

Worth seeing, as already mentioned, certainly for the music and cinematography, but also for the 19th-century romanticism of impossible love.

There has been many complaints and objections against this film, but they are of no consequence, since all betray one and the same thing: they haven't understood that this is exclusively a film about music and a musician. Although there is a story, it is not told straight but rather hinted at all the way, while the main body of the film is the composer's dreams, his fancies, his hallucinations sometimes but above all his moods. This is a film of moods and an admirable attempt to set moods to music with the use of film sequences to illustrate them and put them into life and colour. Innokenti Smoktunovsky makes a great performance although it is not quite convincing, since he is too good-looking, while Tchaikovsky in reality suffered from aging too quick and too soon - at the age of 53, when he died, he was still a young man, but he looked at least twenty years older. He grew white very early, and this enforced aging process by nature has been much discussed and never been quite understood, but since he was a highly oversensitive and overstrung nature, he most probably just consumed himself too fast, mainly by nervous worrying and stress. His sponsor Mrs Meck is played by Antonina Shuranova more convincingly, and one of the great credits of the film is bringing her fully to life. There is a brief but splendid guest appearance by Maya Plisetskaya, one of Russia's many major ballerinas, Ivan Turgenev also appears in Paris, as does Nicolai Rubinstein in an important part, while Tchaikovsky's wife (in a short and failed marriage) only appears casually in the first part, that ends with his (probably) attempted suicide, just like Robert Schumann, with whom Tchaikovsky felt closely spiritually related - they both made music to Lord Byron's "Manfred", one of Tchaikovsky's most remarkable and greatest symphonies, bypassed here. The main interest of the film, although beautiful and wonderfully photographed all the way, bringing all the loveliest sides of 19th century Russia to life, is the way Dimitri Tiomkin has treated Tchaikovsky's music. Tiomkin, originally Russian, was one of the very best composers of Hollywood, if not the very best one, and he really put his soul into this job of suiting Tchaikovsky's music to a film made as a tribute to Russia's greatest and probably eternally most loved composer. His tempos are rather fast, but that's the way of film music - it's a common trait that film music always has to run too fast. Perhaps the very finest sequence is that of the "Waltz of the Flowers", the only piece in the film played in full, before the final elegy. The one character you really miss in the film is Modest, Tchaikovsky's brother, who survived him many years and his chief collaborator in opera librettos, above all of "The Queen of Spades". One of the highlights of the film is how the film makers put Mrs Meck's abandonment of Tchaikovsky in relation with the old duchess in the opera - her great dying soliloquy follows directly on Mrs Meck's final disconnection. No one was closer to Tchaikovsky than his brother Modest and, second, Mrs Meck, although they never met, while the film interestingly suggests some telepathic connection between them. In brief, as a Russian tribute to Tchaikovsky it is wholly successful and worthy as such, although probably Tchaikovsky himself in his modesty would have objected against this next to apotheosis of him.

This was by far the worst movie I have ever seen in my life. The acting is terrible, the musical score doesn't even fit the scenes - it's just random Tchaikovsky pieces inserted in random places. When some characters are speaking French (they were in France I think, I only got that from one line saying it was good to travel), it's just dubbed over. The actual actors/actresses don't even speak French. To top it off, there are no subtitles indicating what these actors are actually saying. In one scene there is about 2 minutes of yelling between a French transient and somebody walking with Tchaikovsky - very heated discourse - and there are no subtitles. The cinematography is horrific - tons of shaky shots/off center shots/ etc. Basically, this is a film where a bunch of extras were put in with a shoddy story (I'm not entirely sure there was a flowing story), terrible dialogue, and a musical score that never fits the scene. This is, without a doubt, the worst film I have ever seen in my life. This is a travesty of film.

I will remember this movie all my life.I watched it twice on the 80s in a movie club.One with my friends and the other with my dad,a real fan of Tchaikowski as myself.Two days in a row because it was so moving,so wonderfully made,I had to watch it again.I wonder why I didn't find it on cable in all these years!

All the biographical musical movies are better made out of Hollywood ,I must say.Hollywood is too much show and fantasy,but this version of Tchaikowski's life is so close to his actual history you can't help to believe you are actually watching Piotr Yllich living his life than an actor playing a part.

I will always keep in my mind the scene beside the water where he was writing the 4th Symphony in the times of Nadezhda Von Meck,his benefactor.So poetical,so deep and without words.Only music and a beautiful sight.Great photography!If you didn't watch this movie,do.If you like Tchaikowski,you won't regret it.

I always regarded this opus as a rare piece of trash. There is close to nothing from real Tchaikovsky in this movie, just a glossed Stalinist version of the composer, the kind they indoctrinated in every music classroom to every youngster - that he was a progressive genius whose works fit socialist realism and Lenin's ideas about socialist culture very well. By the way, a vast majority of ignorant Russians are still offended by the notion of him being a homosexual. The composer's letters and reputable biographies are published in minuscule circulation, this film is seen by millions. Here's the power of indoctrination even in post-communist era. On top of that, the society is generally extremely homophobic. They used to send people to prison for homosexuality up to 1994, and every year there is a discussion in their parliament on resurrecting this law as part of criminal code. So here is your cultural backdrop...

Now, the movie has its own little merits, but the underlying total lie and poor director's thinking and probably general grasp of the subject make the better parts totally worthless.

Soviet cinema had its glorious moments, especially in the great escape of great patriotic war movies, where things were black and white, at least where the real evil was. The biographies - there were few interesting ones (Tsiolkovsky's, Pavlov come to mind), but always castrated by the intricacies of either Stalinist or post-Stalinist era.

I'd love to ramble on, but I think I got the main message clear - the film is a great lie, and on film merits alone is not a good work either. So to those first few folks who put there rave 10 star reviews - what planet are you from? Start from reading books, including composer's own letters. Then compare what you learned with what you see. Otherwise, Lenin still wins his micro battle in your consciousness, and the bastard doesn't deserve this, and you neither.

It would be great to make a true biographical movie or better yet mini-series about composer's life. His life was full of tremendous drama, add real music scores that make sense - and it could be something worth watching. Hollywood can't do it, its mostly prostituting pure trash, the French or Germans might. Russians could have, when the country and its cinematography was free for a fairly brief time, not these days of self-censorship, return of government control and new rules. And to say the composer was gay is a faux pas. How would one film a biography without this basic fact.

PS Regarding subtitles - never expect a decent work from Russian video publishers, it's in best case scenario a sloppy translation (heck, the translation of Tarkovsky's Andrey Rublev is simply horrible at times, and that's criterion edition). Few exceptions are fairy tales.