Reviews

This puzzles me to no end. My honest feeling is that the claim to offer some kind of social commentary is a layer of "respectability varnish" that serves as an excuse for filmmaker and viewer to indulge in the heavy-handed violence that tickles their fancy, and nobody wants to admit that because, well, their peers (and colleague critics) like it, so it must be good.

But then again, this seems so blindingly obvious that it's hard to believe that so many people fall for it. I'm honestly struggling with this: I think being critical and voicing social commentary is good and necessary, but movies like this feel rather as if it's part of the problem. They're ice-cold, de-humanising, disengaging. They make me care less.

But then again, maybe I'm just stupid and blind.

As a (classical) music lover and agreeing with the filmmaker that Antonia Brico more than deserves to be put in the spotlight, I had high expectations of this movie. Maybe they were set too high: I have mixed feelings after seeing it.

As a movie, I feel that it kept meandering around, never finding a steady pace. I found myself wondering multiple times about sudden jumps in the story that I felt deserved more attention. It was as if the movie wants to cover as much ground as possible at the cost of the flow - even where it doesn't really contribute to the story. Some characters felt like caricatures, which made this movie feel a bit politically motivated. Despite my sympathy for the cause I think that it shouldn't dominate.

Something similar goes for the role of the music in the movie: that, too, felt rather arbitrarily chosen - apart from that brief moment where "Rhapsody in Blue" is mentioned as "new music" (though it was already a few years old by then). In this movie the music itself could have played a much more profound role, but it did so only on a few fleeting moments, as when an angry and upset Antonia hammered Stravinsky on her ramshackle piano with the neighbours yelling "Silence!!" through the walls. I don't know what Ms. Brico's favourite repertoire was, but I can't help thinking what a marvellous role a piece like the Sacre du Printemps, or maybe Alban Berg's "To the memory of an Angel" could have played.

I loved Pippi Långstrumpf because I could dream about being as kick-ass and strong as her; I loved Karlsson på taket because I secretly hoped to one day also find a flying anarchist on our roof; but I love Vi på Saltkråkan because it has blended so perfectly into my own memories of summer holidays, even though that was on Schiermonnikoog instead of Saltkråkan.