John Corigliano photo by Christian Steiner Joshua Bell photo by Frank Ockenfels

Second fiddle to none

François Girard's The Red Violin owes its success to the past masters of music, both instrument builders and composers.  With co-writer Don McKellar and an able cast, he has spun a yarn that crosses all manner of boundaries:  geographic, artistic, and taste. 

The fascinating life of a 1681 "Bussotti" fiddle is told using flashback and fortune telling, whose five cards, like the lines of a staff, provide the framework for the 300+ year tale. 

But it's John Corigliano's haunting score and violinist Joshua Bell's superb artistry that steal the show.  Right from the opening out-of-focus shot of the maker's workshop, the rich soundscape of dissonant strings ebbing their way to unisons and major tonalities fitted the action brilliantly.  And special mention must be made of the painstaking efforts taken by all-concerned—particularly Alain Dostie's camera and Gaétan Huot's deft editing—to give the non-violinists in the audience a thoroughly convincing impression that the actors were actually playing the notes we saw and heard.  Bravo! 

The music/drama held up well until the Oxford sequence where Jason Flemyng's portrayal of the hedonistic virtuoso Frederick Pope (so ironically named given the later desire of the Monks from Cremona to buy back the "devil's own" instrument).  Having sex with the alluring Greta Scacchi while playing his latest inspiration ("it's a theme I want to work out") pushed the credibility envelope a little too far and provided unintentional humour:  bow job extraordinaire. 

The entire Shanghai episode (brought about by a convenient suicide and stereo-typical Asian-as-servant conceit) added new degrees of depth to the "red" metaphor but moved at an Adagio tempo.  Not surprisingly, the absence of any substantive musical contributions from the score or the story in these scenes added to the lethargy. 

Finally in Montréal, the plot and the music roared ahead as appraiser Charles Morritz (Samuel L. Jackson) haughtily went about his task of evaluating an entire shipment of fine instruments—including the title piece—for Canadian Customs and then gentleman-auctioneer, Colm Feore's House of Duval.  Despite being a Canadian production (Alliance Atlantis, Rhombus Media), it's sad to see the need for an American expert scripted when, in fact, there are many knowledgeable Canadians who would have been up for the job. 

Nonetheless, Jackson provides the film's best moments when he, wordlessly, realizes the true identity of the violin and as he listens to an aging virtuoso (whose demeanour reminded me of the late Isaac Stern) effortlessly coax the melodic gold out of perfect convergence of science and art.  Only F. Murray Abraham as Salieri in Amadeus could top that. 

And so the film winds down with the mystery of the varnish solved and another young life about to be given the chance to play the now purloined instrument in the sequel. 

Cross-references:  David Jalbert Plays Corigliano; Joshua Bell plays Tchaikovsky Concerto in Buffalo