The Red Violin

viewed June 2, 2000 on VHS

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Don McKellar and Francois Giraud, two of the most ambitious creative forces in contemporary Canadian cinema, set out to weave a narrative that encompasses thousands of years and miles, trying to illustrate the frailties of the human condition in the presence of an object of humanly crafted perfection, a violin whose music inspires lust, greed and chaos throughout history.  

The story is told through an amazing though slight double narrative frame of alternating flashbacks (a modern-day auction of the violin) with flashforwards (ominous signs of the violin's fate are foretold in a tarot reading with the violin maker's wife), a concept much more interesting than its execution.  The film as a whole is a great concept, buffetted by immaculately lush production values, but has no characters worth caring about.  The so-called secrets that are parsimoniously withheld through the length of the film, such as the source of the violin's color, are transparent.  

The many episodes that comprise the narrative, each revolving aroundthe violin, range from plausible to ridiculous.  The most interesting concerns the fate of the violin during the Chinese Cultural Revolution, where a closet music lover tries to smuggle it out of the country before it is destroyed as a tool of Western imperialism.  On the other hand, an episode involving an English aristocrat who uses the violin to feed his creative and sexual energies is fairly ludicrous.  Almost as silly is Samuel L. Jackson's miscasting as a violin expert -- it has nothing to do with his race, and everything to do with his demeanor.  His persona simply doesn't convey the refinement to come across as a convincing expert in centuries-old violins.  (Whether he can become convincing as an expert in The Force remains to be seen with the next Star Wars installment).

Like McKellar and Giraud's pervious collaboration, 32 Short Films about Glenn Gould, this film is high on concept and yet leaves one a bit cold at the end.  Somehow a violin isn't enough to string together several centuries of human strife -- more attention should have been paid to deepening the human characters so that they're actually worth caring about.  But when your narrative structure only allows for 20 minutes per set of characters, you've already set yourself at a disadvantage. 

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