This is a film (2006) I first saw years ago, and liked very much. i watched it again tonight, and utterly enjoyed it. It has been criticized, yet I like this review’s point: this great composer deserves to have a good film made about his music, and this is a very good film.
Handmaiden to a Maestro and Midwife to His Symphony
“Copying Beethoven” takes place in 1824, toward the end of Beethoven’s life. Ms. Kruger plays Anna Holtz, a Viennese music student who through talent, ambition and happenstance finds herself summoned to transcribe Beethoven’s messy musical notations. Stone deaf, Beethoven initially rebuffs her services (you’re a woman, he all but shouts, as if her sex were a crime), but quickly relents. Time and life are running out, and he is too preoccupied with finishing his latest symphony to rout out someone new. So together, in a darkly lighted apartment where rats scuttle underfoot amid eggshells and overflowing chamber pots, he composes and she copies. In time, the work and the notes join forces until one evening, with Beethoven conducting, the Ninth Symphony erupts into a dazzled world.
The presentation of the Ninth is reason alone to see the film.