Immortal Beloved (1994) – the spiritual and the sensual:

Review by Jack Kost

 

Music is the mediator between the spiritual and the sensual life.

– Ludwig van Beethoven.

 

This was an easy movie for me to love, because I’ve always loved Beethoven’s music.

I first heard Moonlight Sonata when I was a young kid and couldn’t get it out of my head.

As I heard more, I quickly became a fan.

In Immortal Beloved (1994), Ludwig van Beethoven wrote a last will and testament, leaving everything to his “Immortal Beloved”, but doesn’t name her specifically in the letter.

The identity of Beethoven’s true love and heir is still speculated to this day.

Immortal Beloved, directed and written by Bernard Rose, offers a possible theory as to how it might have been.

The movie opens with Beethoven (Gary Oldman), at the moment of his death.

Lightning flashes illuminate his face and coincide with the powerful opening of Beethoven’s majestic Fifth Symphony, booming on the soundtrack.

The opening credits and music rise as Beethoven’s coffin is carried out of his home and through crowded streets.

Anton Schindler (Jeroen Krabbé), Beethoven’s – at times – long-suffering secretary and biographer, reads his eulogy at the graveside:

Anton Schindler:

“Ludwig van Beethoven, the man who inherited and increased the immortal fame of Handel and Bach, of Haydn and Mozart, is now no more.

He was an artist, and who will stand beside him?

He was an artist, and what he was, he was only through music.

The thorns of life had wounded him deeply, so he held fast to his art, even when the gate through which it entered was shut.

Music spoke through a deafened ear to he who could no longer hear it.

He carried the music in his heart.

Because he shut himself off from the world, they called him hostile.

They said he was unfeeling, and called him callous.

But he was not hard of heart.

It is the finest blades that are most easily blunted, bent or broken.

He withdrew from his fellow man after he had given them everything, and had received nothing in return.

He lived alone, because he found no second self.

Thus he was, thus he died.

Thus he will live for all time.”

While fending off aggressive money-grubbers, grasping for the inheritance, Schindler travels through Austria.

His personal mission is to seek out the women involved with Beethoven, discover the identity of the rightful recipient, and deliver the letter to her.

During his quest, he meets and interviews Giulietta Guicciardi (Valeria Golino), Anna-Marie Erdödy (Isabella Rossellini), Johanna Reiss (Johanna ter Steege) and Nanette Streicherova (Miriam Margolyes), the owner of a hotel where Beethoven stayed and trashed the room.

We learn about Beethoven’s childhood at the hands of his brutish father.

His progressive deafness.

Failing health.

Reclusiveness.

His failed attempt to mentor his nephew, Karl (Marco Hofschneider), possibly wishing to vicariously experience success again.

The supporting cast includes:

Gerard Horan, Christopher Fulford, Michael Culkin, Barry Humphries, Alexandra Pigg, Geno Lechner, and Claudia Solti.

Immortal Beloved was released on December 16, 1994,

coinciding with Ludwig van Beethoven’s birthday: December 16, 1770.

Gary Oldman’s performance, as Beethoven, is intense and faultless.

Oldman is a talented character actor, possessing a chameleon ability to transform himself, physically and psychologically, into any role he portrays.

He becomes the part.

I watch Oldman in this movie, and I feel like I’m watching the real Beethoven.

There are many unforgettable scenes: Beethoven resting his head on the piano, as he plays Moonlight Sonata … the Ode to Joy debut … the young Beethoven, floating in the shallows of the lake, the night sky reflected in the water, giving the illusion that he is suspended in the universe.

Since its release, Immortal Beloved has been compared with Amadeus (1984), directed by Miloš Forman, another fictionalized drama about Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

I also enjoyed Amadeus.

However, I can’t compare it to Immortal Beloved.

These are two separate movies, about different composers, made by different directors.

No matter whether the events depicted are historically accurate, or not, Immortal Beloved is the perfect merging of several genres: romance, love story, biopic, mystery, drama, tragedy.

The one question I was left with, a question that negates the theory of this movie, was why Beethoven didn’t go after Johanna Reiss after he arrived at the hotel and discovered she had left.

Beethoven could have followed her, even after venting and trashing the room.

That out of his system, he could have simply followed Johanna back to her home, caught up with her, and explained what happened during his journey and the reason for his late arrival.

The circumstances were out of Beethoven’s control.

I’m sure Johanna would have understood.

The mystery remains unsolved, but the movie is still a beautifully filmed drama from Mel Gibson's Icon production company.

An engaging, enthralling, and moving experience, with flawless performances throughout, and superb cinematography.

Like Ridley Scott’s The Duellists (1977), another true story of the Napoleonic era, the attention to period detail and costume design takes the viewer back in time to Beethoven’s world.

On a trivia note, Beethoven’s music is also a major theme of A Clockwork Orange (1971), directed by Stanley Kubrick, based on the novel by Anthony Burgess.

The Thieving Magpie, by Gioachino Rossini, is also on the soundtrack.

Beethoven’s Ode to Joy is also covered on the soundtrack to Die Hard (1988), directed by John McTiernan.

Beethoven’s music can also be heard in: A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965), The Breakfast Club (1985), Dead Poets Society (1989), Mr. Holland’s Opus (1995), and The King’s Speech (2010), and A Ghost Story (2017).

Ludwig van Beethoven was a genius.

An artist, driven to create by composing and expressing himself through music.

His brilliance is reflected in his work.

Work that has endured over centuries.

In the majestic music he gave to the world.

Created as he battled with his own flaws, inner demons, physical disability, and worsening health.

Finally, if the theory presented in this movie is accurate, Immortal Beloved is the story of love lost and rediscovered, even though too late for those involved.

As Dylan Thomas wrote:

Though lovers be lost, love shall not;

and death shall have no dominion.

Ludwig van Beethoven

December 16, 1770 – March 26, 1827

Romeo Is Bleeding (1994) - the pain of regret:

Review by Jack Kost

You ever wonder what hell is like? Maybe it ain’t the place you think. Fire and Brimstone. Devil with horns, poking you in the butt with a pitchfork. What’s hell? The time you should have walked, but you didn’t. That’s hell.

– Gary Oldman as Jim Daugherty / Jack Grimaldi.

Atmospheric, intense, suspenseful, seductive, dark, cold, moody, bloody, brutal and brilliant …

Romeo Is Bleeding (1994) is everything I want my favorite noir / neo-noir genre to be.

The movie opens with a one-man pity party.

There’s no pity like self-pity and Jim Daugherty (Gary Oldman) is feeling oh, so sorry for himself.

He leads a very different life to the one he destroyed five years ago.

Now, he’s running a lonely diner off the interstate.

The diner is empty.

After he cleans up, empties ashtrays, he uses the spare time to look through a photo album.

Through flashback and voice-over narration, he takes us through his previous life and the events

leading up to him being here.

We learn who he was before he became Jim Daugherty through the witness protection program.

Before he landed himself in trouble, he was Jack Grimaldi, a sergeant in the NYPD.

He’s a wise-cracking smart-ass with his brains in his balls, and he talks about love – a lot!

Jack Grimaldi:

“Do you know what makes love so frightening? It’s that you don’t own it; it owns you.”

He’s also a serial adulterer.

Nailing any woman willing to give it up to him.

His latest mistress is Sheri (Juliette Lewis), a cocktail waitress who wants Jack to fully commit and make a life with her.

Lust and Greed are the deadly sins that cloud his judgment.

Infidelity and money are his main priorities.

Jack Grimaldi:

“Well, like they say, a man don’t always do what’s best for him. Sometimes, he does the worst. He listens to a voice in his head. What do you know? He finds it’s the wrong voice. That’s what love can do to you.”

Annabella Sciorra is perfect as his long-suffering wife, Natalie, in a controlled, convincing and heart-breaking performance.

When she stands at the refrigerator, turns and points Jack’s own gun at him, her eyes burn and there’s an intense moment of stillness where we hear the mood music rise with the sense of heat in that kitchen, and we’re unsure if she’s actually going to shoot him.

There’s a neat touch with a distant bell tolling in the background; a for whom the bell tolls moment.

She turns it into a jokey gotcha moment, but we can tell the intention was there.

Before she lightens the moment with a smile and a wink, it’s as if she’s thinking: I know what you’ve been doing!

Jack can be romantic with his wife, when he wants to be, with dances under the stars and little gifts.

However, the romantic gestures don’t fool Natalie.

The camera, like the necklace in a later scene, is a guilt gift.

Jack has been up to his old tricks again and Natalie is on to him.

When he gifts her with a brand-new camera, Natalie unwraps it with a knowing look and a sarcastic tone to her voice.

Natalie Grimaldi:

“Okay. Now either I was really good, Jack, or you were really bad.”

Jack asks: “How come you never show me those pictures you take?”

Natalie deflects his question.

It’s not explained whether Natalie has a private detective following Jack, photographing his philandering, or she is tracking Jack herself.

It makes no difference.

Natalie adds the pictures of Jack’s numerous mistresses into the pages of the album, after their wedding photos.

As if to make the point: here’s us at our happiest moment, and the following pages of this album are the gallery of women you destroyed us for.

Natalie is quietly gathering the evidence of his multiple betrayals.

Biding her time.

Leading up to the moment she will leave and divorce him.

The end of their marriage doesn’t happen the way she might have envisioned, when Jack returns home panicked, bloody and missing a toe.

He gives her the half-million in mob blood money he’s collected and sends her out of town with instructions to set up a new home for them to share in the future.

Their farewell scene in the car is perfectly acted, as Jack pleads with Natalie not to abandon him.

Natalie walks out of his life, raising her hand in painful resignation, as she turns to him and says: “See ya when I see ya.”

With his colleagues and the mob, Jack is playing a dangerous game; playing everyone in his life for fools, working both sides against the middle.

He’s part of a team of detectives, liked and respected by his team, but he tips off the mob as to where prosecution witnesses are hidden.

The witnesses are murdered and Jack is paid well for his disloyalty: $65,000 a time,

for every witness he gives up to the mob.

The mob boss is the quietly menacing Don Falcone (Roy Scheider).

Jack thinks he’s got it all worked out, until he meets Mona Demarkov (Lena Olin).

She is caught on a job, arrested, and kept in protective custody until she can stand trial.

Falcone fears Mona will give him up as part of a plea deal.

Lena Olin is perfectly cast as a ruthless stone-cold femme fatale, seductive and cunning, with brains to match her beauty, a killer smile and a maniacal laugh.

Jack tries to distance himself from the mob, but they’ve got him on the dangle.

Jack is in – until Falcone says otherwise.

Jack thinks he can play Mona, the way he plays everyone else in his life, but it’s really Mona who’s toying with Jack.

She sees him for exactly who and what he is.

Mona is smarter than Jack and lethal.

Her movements are precise.

Cat-like.

Almost balletic as she steps, squats and glides around Jack, knowing exactly how to seduce him.

Like the Praying Mantis, Mona kills her men after mating, when she has no further use for them.

In the car scene, leading up to Mona forcing Jack to bury Falcone alive, Mona shares her “first time” experience.

The way she speaks, we’re led to believe she’s talking about the first time she made love to another man,

until she talks about how she closed his eyes, left him there, and returned to her home.

Mona concludes: “I guess you never forget the first time.”

A tear falls from her eye, like it was a beautiful moment in her life,

but she’s really talking about the first time she murdered someone.

Through the brutality, raw emotion is displayed.

Tears are shed by almost all the characters.

We believe their pain and fear because of the high caliber of the acting.

The entire cast of talented character actors shine and deliver powerful performances, including those in supporting or cameo roles: Will Patton, Ron Perlman, Dennis Farina, Tony Sirico, Michael Wincott, David Proval, Larry Joshua, Jay Patterson and James Cromwell.

The story comes full circle with Jack left alone.

A haunted and hollow man.

His career and former life destroyed.

Despised by the colleagues who once respected him.

Cast out to his desert highway exile.

He still hangs on to a tenuous shred of hope, that one May 1st, or December 1st, his wife will walk back into his life.

All will be forgiven.

They can be reunited and make a fresh start.

We – the audience – know it’s never going to happen.

Maybe, deep down, he knows it, too.

But he’ll never admit it.

His wife is gone.

Forever.

But he still hangs on to that hope.

Convincing himself that, even after all that happened, she still loves him.

Jack is in hell.

The hell of his own making.

That faint, futile, tenuous hope, is all the comfort he has left.

Seeing Jack alone at the end of the movie, I remembered a line from the 1970 Joni Mitchell song Big Yellow Taxi:

“Don't it always seem to go

That you don't know what you've got

Till it's gone.”

I get the feeling that song would resonate with Jack, as he sits and rereads the letter he wrote to his long-gone wife, the letter she never received.

In the end, Jack may feel he’s a fool for love, but he’s just a fool to himself.

By the way he treated his wife, it can be argued that, although he talks a lot about love,

he’s too selfish to know what love really is.

He screwed up his chance for true love with Natalie and ended up with nothing but loneliness, shame and the pain of regret.

Romeo Is Bleeding was directed by Peter Medak, written by Hilary Henkin,

and released in the United States on February 4, 1994.

The note-perfect music soundtrack, by Mark Isham, is one of my favorites.

When I first saw the movie during its opening cinema run, I left the theatre, went to a music store, and bought the soundtrack CD straight away.

One of my favorite scenes and sections of music is just over 37 minutes into the movie, where Jack goes to the records department, looks through Mona Demarkov’s file, steals an audio cassette tape from the evidence folder, and listens to the recording in his car.

The music includes atmospheric background swells, emphasizing the sinister undertone.

This is a key scene: Jack discovers the danger Mona poses to him, the extent to which she can manipulate and destroy others … and yet, though his own selfishness and stupidity, he goes along with her regardless.

Romeo Is Bleeding is beautifully filmed, well-paced, impeccably written, compelling and mesmerizingly stylish.

Of the many neo-noir erotic crime thrillers, particularly those made in the 1990s, Romeo Is Bleeding is one of the best.