Le maître de musique

Belgium's nominee for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar of 1988 is an elegant highbrow crowd pleaser, in which music scores by Verdi, Mahler, Mozart et al get top billing over the actors, and not without good reason. World-renowned baritone Jose van Dam stars as a (surprise) world-renowned baritone, who for reasons never fully explained abruptly retires to train aspiring soprano Anne Roussel and (again for unclear reasons) a common thief with a raw singing talent. But what begins as a polite, continental variation of 'Pygmalion', with all the usual trappings of a turn-of-the-century period piece, works up considerable steam when, unknown to van Dam, his arch enemy Prince Scotti begins training his own protégé, hoping to match him against his rival's two pupils in a no-holds-barred aria duel (to the death?) It's a thrilling (if slightly ridiculous) climax, and goes a long way toward compensating for some of the film's earlier, nagging deficiencies. If for no one else, this is a must for classical music aficionados.

The kind of film that earns "European films" the bad rap and bad rep the get from a lot of people these days. I had the feeling the film was written to showcase the music, not vice versa. And since you can't write a terribly compelling film about training vocalists, we're trapped into watching seemingly endless camera pans of trees, birds in them chirping ad nauseum, pseudo-profound, meaningful stares between people who have nothing to say to each other, and a Mahler symphony on the sound track that just simply won't go away. A terribly tedious film.

I certainly disagree with the viewer who called this tedium--after all when one can't tell Mahler's Songs of Ruckert from a symphony, he is no music lover! The recurring song ("Ich bin der welt abhanden gekommen") is very meaningful for it is associated with the teacher, a retired performer (brilliantly played by opera star Jose Van Dam). The words of the song translate as " I am lost to the world with which I used to waste so much time. It has heard nothing from me for so long it may well believe me dead." The song concludes with "I live alone in my heaven, in my love, and in my song." I played this film for a class of students whose knowledge of classical music was nil and they liked it. Of course the young leads were attractive and there was some sex in the film. I suggest you view it should you get the chance. It is one of my favorite films, and you really don't need to be knowledgeable in music to like it as long as you like beauty.

As a dark horse, this Belgian film surprisingly got an Oscar nomination for BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM in 2009, directed by Gerard Corbiau, whom maybe we feel more familiar with for his later work FARINELLI (1994), another music-related opus, with a more dramatic pathos within.

Ominously the music itself steals the thunder of the film per se, which leaves it in an awkward position, where only genuine opera lovers could rigorously indulge themselves with it while for laypeople like me, the waning correlation is unavoidable and discouraging.

The film stars a real maestro José van Dam (the celebrated Belgian bass-baritone) as a singer, who is compelled to retire in his middle-age by his arch enemy, the Duke, with the help of his loyal wife, he trains two disciples and finally get his vengeance over the Duke. However Mr. van Dam's stiff performance could not be excused as a stark novice stage-fright; two young leads Anne Roussel and Philippe Volter also fail to be impressive apart from their singing parts. By contrast, only Sylvie Fennec and Patrick Bauchau deliver some sincere acting skills without too much superficial showing-off.

The setting, costume and all its delicate props are in their right places to exude a bourgeois sentiment which casually goes well with the film's uneventful narrative. The final showdown is a fleeting opera duel between two respective disciples from the maestro and the Duke. The mask tableau is a major attraction, too bad it just ends like that, without too much aftertaste.

After all, one cannot complain more about this film as long as music save us all from this molecularly mundane world.

First off, I love this movie. It is a very true testament to the level of competition inherent in the opera world, or in any performance art. Most people don't understand how hard some teachers can push their students, and it can lead to the ruining of the student's voice. I've seen it many times.

If you didn't notice, both Arcas and Jean sounded very similar - this is because they were played by the same man, M. Jérôme Pruett. He was at the height of his European career at the time. I am currently one of his voice students at the Hartt School in CT, where he is resident faculty.