Tous les matins du monde

'Tous les matins du monde' opens with remarkable, yet quiet and simple audacity. For ten minutes, over the credits and beyond, the camera holds on the pained face of Gerard Depardieu. This shot, about as minimalist as you can get, manages to suggest so much: the actual scene itself (Depardieu as Marais giving a music lesson in Royal Chambers to a number of inept students), his own life and sense of failure, aging, dissipation of talent and emotional paralysis despite the signs of status and wealth, the intimations of a past and a place so alien to the modern and showy Court as to be on a different plane of time and space altogether. It is brilliant cinema, while seeming not very cinematic at all.

'Matins' combines two genres I generally find loathsome and redundant, and yet it is very nearly a masterpiece. First of all, it is a biopic; not really of Marais at all, but his one time teacher, Sainte-Colombe, solitary genius of the viol, and possibly the first Romantic artist, someone who composed not for Royalty or riches, but fore himself, from his own soul, alone. The problem with biopics is that they try to cram a whole life into two hours. This clearly doesn't fit, and so only the most superficial precis is possible, with a string of 'key' moments of formative psychological importance. The end result is something like those brief synopses of authors' lives you get at the beginning of books.

Corneau avoids this trap in a number of ways. There is the general atmosphere of fairy tale - the king and his courtiers; the 'cruel' father and the children he locks up in cellars; the abandoned lover and her jealous sister; the fairy-tale location, with its picturesque fragments of classical splendour, and moonlit tarns; the ghost story intrusion of revenants; the mysterious stranger who overturns the family's lives. This extends to the light, the mysterious blue glow that leaves the narrative in a twilight suspension. Depardieu's narration has the unadorned, measured simplicity of fairy tales, and the unmarked accumulation of events gives a timeless feel, one seperate from the historically verifiable Court.

Further, the film doesn't try to cram in the whole of Sainte-Colombe's life. The couple of decades it does deal with are marked by seeming repetiton and monotony. When he claims at one point to have an exciting emotional and imaginary life, his interlocutors are shocked, because they can only see the historical, physical, dour image, not the magic of a mind that converses with the dead, or outpours the most ascetically mournful music. There are key events, but these are domestic and personal (eg the death of his wife) that slowly shape his personality and the events of the film, not jarring 'Eureka!'-like moments. It is up to us to interpret the patterns, the reality behind the plain image, the unmovingly stern face, the routine events.

By the climax, the film stops being a biopic or historical reacreation, and becomes a heightened, spiritual embodiment of ideas about music, family, tradition. This is not to say the film is vague and ahistorical. It is very good about the marginalisation of equally talented women in this world of obsessive male art, where the only useful female is a dead one; and the brief, comical treatment of arbitrary monarchy is as pointed as anything in 'Ridicule'.

The other genre the film belongs to is the dreaded costume drama, that puffed up fashion parade of bourgeois aspiration, where the allusion to people who used their brains is enough to satisfy audiences who refuse to use theirs; where cufflinks and frills are creamily fetishised, and everything else - plot, character, ideas, subtext - is a mere mannequin. If the average costume drama is marked by bustle and excess, Corneau's film is private and austere. The only lavish costumes are made the object of ridicule - Sainte-Colombe, dressed in black and ruff like Monteverdi, and his daughters, live in sober surroundings, and dress very modestly. The usual period props - big homes, lavish halls, etc. - are stripped bare, become almost cell-like, unmarked by human residue.

This extends to the shooting style. The camera very rarely moves, framing the 'action' like a painting or a tableau vivant - the film's fertile theatricality extends to hearing feet thudding on the boards. This seeming visual parsimony is not too austere - unlike the films of Ozu, say, the static picture is broken up by regular editing which makes viewing less taxing. Corneau has learned a lesson about period dramas from Stanley Kubrick, director of the greatest period film, 'Barry Lyndon'. It's useless getting hstorical facts right and swamping the plot with detail - the heart and soul of any society is in its culture, and so Corneau, by recreating or alluding to famous paintings, music etc. gets closer to the truth of his characters. And the lighting...!

This is a great movie. It's a stunning look at the nature of music and it's a wonderful example of the relationship between music and film. So often in film, music is the afterthought; it's the last step of the production process and often the least considered through production. Corneau's film really works well to blend the visual medium of film with music and show them working in tandem for a brilliant result.

When you hear music in this film, you hear it because a character has picked up an instrument to play it. The film then cuts away from character and instrument, but the music remains and turns into a soundtrack that enhances the emotional power of the film. This is source music used as score, and very rarely do you see that in film. Using the music in this way really deepens the experience and strengthens both the images of the film and the emotion of the music. A music student gave me this movie to watch, and I want to pass it on to film students looking to blend the arts of film and music.

As a professional musician, there are two things that happen in films that are likely to make me quite angry. One is a general concern, and the other is a more elemental notion of the nature of music. This movie deals with both quite well.

The general concern deals with seeing somebody playing an instrument in a scene. It is very rare to see somebody in a film that really looks like they are playing the instrument they are holding. I will grant that it is unrealistic to expect a leading player who has devoted his/her training to the art of acting to be fully proficient on an instrument that a role may require, but more often than not, they are simply given the instrument without any sort of coaching on how the instrument should be held or where their hands should be when the instrument is making a certain sound. When this happens in a film, my ability to suspend disbelief goes right out the window never to return. This is not limited to lead players, however. Often a band that is supposed to be playing music in the background is made up of actors that have no conception of the operation of the arcane devices they are holding. To add insult to injury, the soundtrack seldom matches up to the instrumentation of the band. This movie does an admirable job at keeping things believable in this regard. The instruments are held correctly. The hands of the actors move as they should. With only a few exceptions, the instruments you hear are the ones that are on screen. Even in terms of historical ideas of ornamentation and execution, this movie has done its homework. It seems that most moviemakers regard music as trivial, and thus, they make little effort for accuracy where it is concerned. This movie, perhaps, works harder at it because of its subject matter, which leads me to part two of this diatribe.

What is music? That is the central idea of this film. There is also a story involving a master viol player and his young student who seduces and abandons his eldest daughter, but it is simply a frame for the central question. If you attempt this sort of thing, you are on dangerous ground as far as I am concerned. It is an attempt that isn't made very often. Movies like Amadeus and Farinelli, entertainment value notwithstanding, are more about the personalities involved, and music is the frame rather than the central question. Others, like the contemptible Mr. Holland's Opus, boil the answer down into some trivial concept like "Let the music play you." The answer is not that easy. Speech may not even be capable of expressing it. That is the struggle of this film. The young student is quite talented. His technique is immaculate. The master sees and admits this quite freely. He is even unconcerned that the young student is taking some of his ideas and using them in his own music for publication. He has nothing to teach him as far as technical matters go. His struggle lies in making him a musician instead of a glorified musical acrobat. In this framework, it would be easy to degenerate into the flaccid trivialities that Mr. Holland's Opus embraces, but this film does not do that. It even lines these idiotic platitudes up in order to shoot them down. (In a scene later in the film when the young man returns to the master's villa to hear him play before he dies, the master asks him, "Have you learned that music is not for kings?" "I have learned that music is for God." he replies. The master answers, "No. God can speak for himself.") It is a tangled and complex question. All of the simple generalizations are systematically lined up and exposed for the twaddle that they are.

So what is the answer? This film knows, but if you don't have some inkling of the answer, you may come away from this film with nothing more than an interesting story set in the music world of 17th century France. I have no idea if the historical details of the story are accurate, and it doesn't matter a jot if they are or not. This movie is about a difficult and complex idea that few have even attempted to tackle, let alone delineate it so beautifully. If the question can be answered for you, this film will do it.

Normally I don't listen to classical music. I'm a fan of rock and pop music, which in my opinion is not that bizarre for a 27 year old man, but even though I don't know much about classical music, I can almost always enjoy it when it is used in a movie. The same here. In my opinion, the music may well be the best reason why I want to give this movie another try. I would even say that everybody should watch this movie at least twice. First you should go for the entire movie, so you know the story, and the second time you should close your eyes and turn up the volume in order to fully enjoy the fragile, but oh so beautiful music. I truly wish I knew more about classical music, in order to understand it better. Now I'm only an amateur who can judge in terms of 'I hated it' or 'I loved it', but who isn't able to say much more about it. Still, the movie has more to offer than just the music, the story and the acting are nice as well and that's something I know more to tell about.

This movie starts with an old Marin Marais who is listening to his orchestra that is rehearsing a composition by Monsieur de Sainte Colombe at the royal court in Versailles. But they don't play it the way it should be played and Marin Marais takes a viola da gamba to show them how it should be done. When he starts playing, all his memories about his time with the family de Sainte Colombe return and he starts telling everything: How he first met his master at the age of seventeen, how he fell in love with one of his daughters, how he became appointed to the court of Louis XIV, but never was seen as a real musician by his master... He also tells them that Monsieur de Sainte Colombe had a special way of working and that his music had a special reason of existence for the man. When his wife died and he wasn't home because of his work, the man got overwhelmed by grieve and a severe depression. From that moment on he dedicated his life to music and his two young daughters Madeleine and Toinette, avoiding the outside world and locking himself up in a small wooden shed. It was soon known what a good musician he was, even at the court of Louis XIV, where he was offered a job in the king's orchestra. But he refused because his music wasn't intended for people who didn't understand the real meaning of it: remembering his beloved wife who died too soon.

Despite the fact that in my opinion the Baroque period is probably the worst period in history when it comes to clothing and architecture - it's all much too pompous and over the top to my taste - I must say that it didn't bother me all that much in this movie. The main reason for that is because it wasn't constantly shown. Take for instance Monsieur de Sainte Colombe. Even though he lived in this time period, he didn't wear any of those costumes, but preferred to keep wearing his old and much soberer clothes. The same for his daughters, they never wear those extra large ball gowns, but have quite simple dresses. The only person that wore those clothes was the adult Marin Marais, and he only appears in the last part of the movie. But don't worry, that's about the only bad comment that I have about this movie. The acting and the story are certainly very good and make this movie worth watching. But as I said earlier in this review, nothing could be compared to the wonderful music.

In the end I can only say that everything that I saw, worked. It all looked good and I really don't understand why this movie isn't known by more voters on this website (only 971 at this moment). I believe that the fact that it hasn't been released on DVD yet, can be a reason for that 'problem', but don't let that be a reason not to watch it. When you get the chance to see it on VHS or on television, I certainly should give it a try. I really liked it and I give this movie a 7.5/10.

France -17th Century. Little known 17th Century viol player and composer Monsieur de Sainte Colombe regarded public performance as an act that corrupted the purity of music. Since his wife's death, he had lived in isolation with his two daughters Madeleine and Toinette –until a young musician, Marin Marais, convinces him to teach him viol. The ambitious pupil, aware of the unique quality of his master's music, will stop at nothing to get hold of the scores. The entire movie is played in rhythm with the viol -slow, melancholic, pure, beautiful. Action addicts should not even try to watch. But art lovers will have a delightful time.