Copying Beethoven

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.