Now Playing
Critics & Publications
Archives: A-Z Index
Advanced Search

Upcoming Release Calendar
Weekend Box Office
Film Awards & Top 10s By Year
All-Time High Scores
All-Time Low Scores
How Metascores Are Calculated
Discuss Film In Our Forums

sort by name

sort by score

38 12 Rounds
48 17 Again
76 Adventureland
48 Angels & Demons
54 Battle for Terra
xx Bruno
80 Coraline
40 Dance Flick
83 Drag Me to Hell
72 Earth
45 Fast & Furious
61 Fighting
34 Ghosts of Girlfriends Past
72 Gran Torino
73 Hangover, The
47 Hannah Montana: The Movie
51 Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs
54 Imagine That
41 Knowing
32 Land of the Lost
56 Monsters vs. Aliens
34 My Life in Ruins
51 My Sister's Keeper
46 Next Day Air
42 Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian
54 Observe and Report
25 Obsessed
48 Proposal, The
70 Public Enemies
61 Soloist, The
83 Star Trek
64 State of Play
55 Taking of Pelham 1 2 3, The
52 Terminator Salvation
35 Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen
77 Under the Sea 3D
88 Up
43 X-Men Origins: Wolverine
34 Year One

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

sort by name

sort by score

67 $9.99
75 24 City
66 Adoration
74 Afghan Star
48 Alien Trespass
56 American Violet
82 Anvil! The Story of Anvil
57 Away We Go
81 Beaches of Agnes, The
62 Big Man Japan
28 Big Shot-Caller, The
78 Boys: The Sherman Brothers' Story, The
55 Brothers Bloom, The
82 Burma VJ: Reporting from a Closed Country
xx Call of the Wild
63 Cheri
62 Cherry Blossoms
63 Dead Snow
65 Departures
18 Downloading Nancy
58 Easy Virtue
70 End of the Line, The
77 Every Little Step
64 Examined Life
80 Food, Inc.
38 Gigantic
56 Girl from Monaco, The
67 Girlfriend Experience, The
87 Gomorrah
89 Goodbye Solo
63 Great Buck Howard, The
79 Harvard Beats Yale 29-29
xx Home
82 Hunger
91 Hurt Locker, The
16 I Hate Valentine's Day
81 Il Divo
54 Is Anybody There?
71 Jerichow
58 Julia
74 Lemon Tree
36 Life is Hot in Cracktown
40 Limits of Control, The
42 Little Ashes
64 Lymelife
50 Management
57 Merry Gentleman, The
66 Moon
35 New York
62 Not Forgotten
xx Offshore
78 O'Horten
64 Outrage
40 Paris 36
54 Pontypool
71 Pressure Cooker
52 Quiet Chaos
83 Revanche
67 Rudo y Cursi
86 Seraphine
65 Sex Positive
70 Shall We Kiss?
77 Sin Nombre
59 Sleep Dealer
74 Song of Sparrows, The
54 Stoning of Soraya M., The
82 Sugar
84 Summer Hours
61 Sunshine Cleaning
28 Surveillance
42 Tennessee
63 Tetro
64 Throw Down Your Heart
80 Tokyo Sonata
63 Tokyo!
70 Tony Manero
74 Treeless Mountain
88 Tulpan
74 Two Lovers
83 Tyson
83 U2 3D
60 Under Our Skin
69 Unmistaken Child
69 Valentino: The Last Emperor
22 What Goes Up
45 Whatever Works
57 Youssou Ndour: I Bring What I Love

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

Copying Beethoven
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer


7.5

based on 20 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 16 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie

FILM:

MPAA RATING: PG-13 for some sexual elements

Starring Diane Kruger, Ed Harris, Ralph Riach, Matthew Goode, Joe Anderson, Bill Stewart, and Phyllida Law

In this romantic period piece set in Vienna, a young music student and aspiring composer (Kruger) accepts a job as a copyist for Ludwig von Beethoven (Harris) as he works to complete his latest symphony.

GENRE(S):	Drama \| Romance
WRITTEN BY:	Stephen J. Rivele Christopher Wilkinson
DIRECTED BY:	Agnieszka Holland
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: April 3, 2007 Theatrical: November 10, 2006
RUNNING TIME:	104 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	USA / Germany

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir

Copying Beethoven has an ace up its sleeve: the wonder and drama of the Ninth Symphony itself (heard here in Bernard Haitink's tremendous 1996 recording with the Royal Concertgebouw).

The New York Times Manohla Dargis

Topped with that messy salt-and-pepper wig that frames and obscures his scowling, searching face, [Harris] invests Beethoven with a violent turbulence that sometimes floods the room but mostly stays coiled inside, where it seethes.

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

The movie is completely beguiling, and it delivers joy, the beautiful spark of the gods.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

Has one knockout sequence: the deaf maestro conducting his Ninth Symphony as Anna coaches from the wings. It goes on for what seems a whole reel, but it's so sublime it seems too short and, by itself, could stand as one of the greatest classic music videos ever.

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

Copying Beethoven, at its best, is a sort of grand cinema opera of the composer's life and music.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

Agnieszka Holland (Europa Europa, The Secret Garden) directs with obvious feeling rather than cynicism, and I was swept away by it despite the story's anachronisms.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

There are two reasons to see - and hear - Agnieszka Holland's Copying Beethoven. One is Ed Harris' performance as the nearly deaf and totally egocentric Ludwig van; the other is a cherry-picked 10-minute chunk of the composer's soaring Ninth Symphony.

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

Like an old college wrestler, Harris saunters through this toasty little piece of biographical fiction in love with the part's fixins'.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

This is one of those middle-of-the-road art pictures that will impress some music lovers and attract a small audience, but won't really excite anyone. Copying Beethoven does not do for its title composer what Amadeus did for Mozart, and that's a shame.

Village Voice Luke Y. Thompson

Screenwriters Stephen J. Rivele and Christopher Wilkinson, best known for the two ponderous biopics "Ali" and "Nixon," deliver a film awkwardly composed.

Los Angeles Times Carina Chocano

Shot by Ashley Rowe to look like a cross between a Vermeer retrospective and a music video, Copying Beethoven is silly and misguided, if reasonably entertaining for its charming lack of self-awareness, its weakness for lines like "Loneliness is my religion!" and its transcendently beautiful music.

The New Republic Stanley Kauffmann

We are left finally with a double response: it is hard to know exactly why the film was made, what its emotional and thematic point is, yet we are glad it happened because of Harris's performance.

San Francisco Chronicle Ruthe Stein

Harris' impressive channeling of Ludwig is diluted by the decision of screenwriters Stephen Rivele and Christopher Wilkinson to put the copyist front and center, possibly to distinguish their feature from "Immortal Beloved."

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

More music and less melodrama would serve audiences better.

The Hollywood Reporter Michael Rechtshaffen

The picture never successfully comes off the written page.

Variety Leslie Felperin

Helmer Agnieszka Holland's Copying Beethoven joins 1994's "Immortal Beloved" in the ranks of mediocre dramatic interpretations of Beethoven's biography.

LA Weekly James C. Taylor

One is left yearning for the overheated melodrama of Bernard Rose's 1994 Beethoven biopic, "Immortal Beloved," which was trashy, but fun.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Nathan Rabin

Aspires to the sublime, but it stalls at the merely ridiculous.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

Harris can be a brilliant actor, and there are flashes of that here. But he's done in by a script that lacks any subtlety.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

Holland's empurpled bio-fantasy is hooey with an anachronistic feminist slant from start to finish.

The average user rating for this movie is 7.5 (out of 10) based on 16 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Paul W. gave it a1:
Firmly set in the 21st century, with no period feel whatsoever. Beethoven was TOTALLY deaf for the last 15 years of his life, yet here he hears when it suits the script writers. Typical well-meaning American schmalz.

Michael E gave it an8:
Captures the essence of Beethoven along with a stirring performance of his ninth symphony.

William w. gave it a9:
Excellent story. Performance of the ninth was magnificent.

John B. gave it a9:
Although the storyline is not too strong, the film captures brilliantly the agony and the ecstasy of Beethoven's struggle to produce his masterwork and the (edited) performance of the 9th is one of the most moving experiences of my more than 50 years of being a movie fan!

Eduardo P. gave it a10:
Great movie, wonderful argument.

Luis C. gave it a1:
The film is a farse. The most unforgivable mistake is presenting an apparently deaf Beethoven that sometimes hears everything and some other times he invents the perfect excuse to blackmail Anna. Bad film.

Cathy C. gave it a9:
I couldn't disagree more with Nick B.'s assessment of Diane Kruger's acting. She approached her role with subtlety, not flatness. Yes, Harris portrays Beethoven as "over the top" and bombastic. He was that way in real life, an egotist. This film isn't about Beethoven, it's about how the times treated women, and shut them out of important pursuits. It's a feminist "what if" by a feminist director. It should be viewed for it's intent, not what we wish it were.

Copying Beethoven Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Copying Beethoven
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer