"IMMORTAL BELOVED" Great title for an excellent film.. despite Gary Oldman's heroic efforts to make himself look ugly and do the deep growling voice that LvB apparently had. Beethoven didn't have too much time for serious love-affairs with women, although, apart from his obsession with his nephew Carl.. (no evidence to suppose LvB was gay) there WAS/IS an entity to fit the bill of the title. All through history and to the present day, many artistes claim to be inspired by a beautiful female figure whispering in their ear - referred to as INSPIRATION or MUSE. This was, I believe, Ludwig van Beethoven's IMMORTAL BELOVED. Just for fun: the concert orchestra is correctly costumed and quite small, but the sound-track features Georg Solti, conducting the enormous London Symphony Orchestra. LvB should have been so lucky...

Not at all convinced. Why? Because this movie has numerous historical inaccuracies aka no chronological order: Ludwig van Beethoven's (17 December 1770 – 26 March 1827) total deafness occurs far too early, LvB is conducting personally works he actually never did, composing works in the wrong time order, etc. In addition to that, the movie takes too many liberties, to my taste, about the biographical facts, and to imply that that famous love-letter, written by LvB to his 'Immortal Beloved', would be ultimately his sister-in-law is just utterly preposterous. That letter was written and could have been addressed to several very well known ladies, we meet some of them during the movie, nevertheless no absolute certainty was proved until today. But it's most certainly not his sister-in-law, with whom he had so many conflicts and legal battles over years. The idea that LvB composed the 9th for his sister- in-law as a-forgive-me-for-making-your-life-a-hell is the director's personal fabrication and so is the feeble ending.Also, there is much more to LvB than his 5th, 9th and the Pathetique and it's a shame that even these were cut into bits and pieces and added here and there without any musicality to the frames, but rather as background music.There is short scene when a white pianist is accompanied by a black violinist playing the Kreutzer Sonata; it did ring a bell but I had to look it up. The 'mulatto' violinist was supposed to be George Bridgetower (11 October 1778–29 February 1860) an Afro-Polish-born virtuoso who had a quite tempestuous professional relationship with LvB. Such a shame that this was not more elaborately depicted in the movie. That could have been a great instructive scene.LvB is quite distorted here and even the great actor Gary Oldman can't save his dignity nor the voluptuous and expensive production. Actually Mr Oldman is over the top but I blame it on the pathetic direction.Watchable for the young, but not very instructive.p.s. Hearing the gorgeous Isabella Rossellini speak a couple of sentences in Hungarian made me smile :-)

People get tied up on whether or not this film portrays the life of Beethoven accurately; this misses the point of the film entirely. This is not so much a film about Beethoven, so much as the way in which he effected those around him, and inspired a devotion among his followers which lives to this day. If you consider a movie like, for instance, 'Shakespeare in Love'--- it's quite apparent to anyone who knows anything about Shakespeare that the film has only the faintest correlation to Shakespeare, which didn't seem to get in the way of people awarding THAT movie, and lauding praise on it, because Shakespeare was played as a hopeless romantic that everyone WANTS to believe in. While Immortal Beloved may share a similarity to S.I.L in it's, shall we say, creative interpretations, Immortal Beloved is a far superior film because it shows Beethoven in all aspects of his humanity. There's Beethoven as a Romantic rock star, there's the tender friend, the arrogant drunken bastard, the possessive misogynist, the pathetic misanthrope, all of it. Gary Oldman's role is superb. It is difficult to imagine anyone else in the role after seeing this movie.The acting is top-notch, albeit a bit melodramatic at points (Beethoven's assistant especially gets a bit heartfelt a bit often). There are a few scenes in this movie which are truly tearjerker moments. The scene in which 'Ode to Joy' is played is predictably great, even though it (like a lot of the film) feels a bit dated now.All in all, a rewarding and thoughtful piece on a man whose life was indeed complicated and monumental.Highly recommended.

This is the most creatively written historical fiction I've seen since Amadeus. Writer/director Bernard Rose did a fantastic job of piecing together scraps of history and filling in the blanks with an outrageously clever theory. Make no mistake; this is NOT a biopic. So don't think you can cram for tomorrow's Beethoven exam by watching this movie... your teacher will flunk you right out of the conservatory.But if you approach this film as a sort of "conspiracy theory", and if you have a reasonable--but not too precise--familiarity with the facts of Beethoven's life, you will be very entertained, shocked and intrigued at the story.Real quick historical synopsis: In papers found posthumously, Beethoven did indeed mention an "immortal beloved", much to the surprise of the world which thought him to be a solitary soul. The identity of this person has vexed historians for centuries, and speculation has been the cause of many a knock-down, drag-out fight amongst them (those historians can be pret-ty feisty). Here we have a possible explanation which pulls together several interesting episodes from Beethoven's life and weaves them into a believable plot. The historians can duke it out whilst we can enjoy the show.Gary Oldman, as always, delivers a fantastic performance which elevates this film to classic status. Sure, there are flaws in this film, but nothing that cannot be overlooked in light of the acting and of course the music. My only gripe is that the film focuses very heavily on plot (and rightly so, I guess), but in so doing, it sacrifices the poetry of the situation. We rarely get a good, quiet, reflective moment where we can look into the tortured soul of the composer. Instead we get plenty of fiery episodes and situational drama, which is good but can leave us exhausted after a while.Contrast this with the film Amadeus which breaks up the action with carefully crafted monologues and time to breathe & reflect. "Immortal Beloved" can seem like a fast paced action flick compared to that--but again I suppose the complex plot demands it. This is really a minor criticism. Although Amadeus needn't worry about losing its place in my list of best movies ever, Immortal Beloved is certainly worthy of playing in the same league.