Reviews on movie The Red Violin (3)

François Girard – master of short films, video installations, dance films and music videos in 1998, shifts the legend of the “Red Violin” into film language. Mystical, sensual, with a moire pattern in the heart and material only half. The director and screenwriter intertwines the journey from the medieval past to the modern present. It builds a sequence of events in a nonlinear narrative, makes a constant return to modernity, but at a slightly shifted point, a period of time. Expands the boundaries of the impossible to real time, allowing you to touch eternity, become part of it and feel the incredible bliss of being close to understanding the mystery of music. The elusive and revealing only to the elect, like a canto hondo, a hidden (secret) song.
Through the centuries and continents, the old Chesky is predicted for Anna. With a confident dry hand, Cheska turns the cards, and the woman moon, with trepidation, listens to wisdom and what she is destined to pass. La Luna promised her a long road. And He wanted to create for his unborn son a violin that had never existed before — Niccolo Bussoti, a master obsessed with his craft, who puts into the instrument the strongest emotions that man can control. And the one who was going to give him the most precious thing a woman could have on a full moon became his last fiddle. He breathed into the instrument the elusive soul of his beloved. So that centuries later, it echoes the sounds of the past: serene chants of Anna, picked up and driven by a bow to the most remote corners of her psyche soul, her unspent sexuality, prenatal moaning, that centuries later only one person, expert Charles Morritz, whose eyes were filled with tears, and inside firmly settled the desire to get at all costs a unique tool, almost like the obsession of its creator.

One of the los angeles timidos, the meek angels, is the orphan Caspar Weiss, a genius raised by monks who clutched the neck of the violin with his baby hand every night and carefully covered the instrument with a blanket, as if he felt and feared to break this delicate bond with maternal ties, dreaming of becoming famous. A little pale-faced angel, ignoring his heart defect, tirelessly learns to play an instrument closer to which there is nothing in the world, in the rhythm of a metronome - the invention of his teacher Poussin. Prestissimo. To exhaustion, to failure of own breathing, to cardiac arrest. The violin, buried with the boy, will continue to live in spite, will find a new owner: one, another, a third. People and countries change, but the magic of the violin remains the same. For some, she is an ally, for another, a mistress, until inspiration has left, and opium couples have not been led beyond the shaky edge of reality. The fire of the loins will eventually return the former virtuosity to the Englishman, but to immediately forever interrupt the life of the musician, and send the violin far beyond the seas and oceans.
For each place of action there are signs. Some are immutable, like views of snow-capped mountain peaks in a monastery's lattice window or an auction hall in modern-day Montreal. Others reveal atmosphere and mores. A little sleepy houses with dark red roofs of Cremona, where the story begins, are replaced by the austerities of the monastery, the majestic architectural ensembles of Vienna, reflected in the windows of the Poussin crew and striking with their beauty little Weiss. And then in the convex lens of the metronome, Kaspar himself is reflected, inimitable in his performance, who has reached the pinnacle of skill.

But suddenly, in modern reality, while antique musical instruments are being prepared for auction in Montreal, Bussoti’s violin itself begins to look at others, as if choosing the most worthy after the Chinese Cultural Revolution, where it was threatened with burning. Suddenly, there is a look from within the violin, through the efs ... at Morritz: first the evaluator is worthy? Then straight into the eyes, surprised, shocked, confused, but already charmed and full of inexhaustible penetrating longing, reflecting the connection of times, taking somewhere to the full moon, where you can not understand, then feel the talent and infinity of mystery.

My solitary phoenix, my private obsession... your contours are like the sign of infinity, the lines of your deck are like the strained palm of the messenger of fate. Give them to me one by one. Tell the legend about how just at once you rose from the ashes of non-existence, born under the sign of the Moon.
Girard always begins to dance from the idea: the story will tell itself, the main thing is to have time to record, switching attention in time from one face of the crystalline ice of eternity to another, which he does with the skill of Kai, the only one, perhaps, of all involved in the sacred action, who, with a really cold heart and eyes tuned to the beauty of the form, does not succumb to temptation and does not break into the abyss of fetish obsession, whether it is a violin dyed with the blood of a newly-born woman in labor, or a silk web, like Gleipnir embraced the heroes of the next nine years. Five cards, five steps. Rock, dominating over the creation, which is immortal in essence, but whose life span is noticeably higher than human, and, therefore, the presence of perfect dissonance is assumed, the rising newt of the fa-si floating andante cantabile - the symbol of the old woman with a scythe, here - inverted, is it a joke? Rebirth and life are almost eternal... almost eternal. Amen, and this is just the beginning... Just the “Smile” Bradbury, slipping out of the fire thanks to the boy, the only one of all who watched the fire, and did not lose his wings, a strange thing created thanks to the mad sin of a mad master, she continues to live, giving a little madness to all who, like careless moths flying into the flames, dare to approach it.
Con anima - and the baby's ailing heart stops for a moment each time they are threatened with a breakup. Hanged.

Con fuoco appassionato - and the young genius squeezes the loins not the waist of a woman, but her waist. The Devil.

Con spirito - and the Chinese revolutionary is ready to betray all new ideals, except the true. Justice.

Con amore - and the graying art critic commits a crime like a boy - easily, for any day spent without her, even if it is the last, is meaningless. And rightly so, she has her own destiny. The mantra is the vibration of life that is unique to it...and maybe something more? The soul of his unborn child enclosed by its creator, nurtured by the singing of the dead mother of this child, colored by her blood, merged with her blood, this blood baptized? Maybe. The things we create are not we left behind for ages? Ticket to immortality, embedded in a material carrier. The more we invest, the more we are, until there is nothing real left on the other side, then we will breathe freely, with all our breasts ... if there is one in the new form of our existence. And if not, so much the worse for the world, for breath cannot be stopped. Breathing is always burning. So you burned another paradise, my dear.
With my hand I drop the remnants of ashes – you are with me again. Your rough skin under your fingers begins to pour heat. I remember a legend: in a nest of backgammon and myrrh, the phoenix sings the last song, burning, and this song kills anyone who hears it, but ...
But we still have time, don't we?