Bach’s movieⅢ
This is a German-French-Swiss co-production, “Mein name ist bach”, made in 2004.
This film will also be rated very differently depending on who sees it. I myself don’t know what to make of this film anyway. The difference from the other two films is that it only depicts Bach’s last year in 1747, when he visited Berlin for a week or so. Bach is first summoned to the palace of King Friedrich II “in his traveling clothes”. However, Bach’s behavior toward the king, whom he meets for the first time in here, is too “rough”. This is the first discomfort I feel with this film. Even though he is of the same generation as his son, he is the “king of a country” and his son’s “employer”. This attitude seems to me to be too disrespectful. Bach may have been stubborn, but he was definitely not a “rude” person. The actor playing Bach in this movie (Vadim Glowna) does not look like Bach at all, but more like a “scoundrel” who would be better suited to play Scrooge. This alone is enough to make this movie a disappointment.
The second. What surprised me was that historically famous scene where the fortepiano is tested. For some reason, he didn’t improvise the theme given by the Great King. What is the meaning of changing this scene, which is supposed to be the most important part of the story? In the historical record, Bach would have immediately played a “fugue in three voices” on the theme of the Great King. For the first time when the Great King asked him to play a fugue for six voices, he politely declined, and instead improvised on his own theme. In this film, however, Bach is in a bad mood from start to finish, and eventually goes back to his son Emanuel’s house without responding to the Great King’s request and without performing.
The third. I don’t know if this is to make the story more interesting (but it seems to me that it ruins the story), interjects fictions one after another, such as the eldest son Friedemann’s love affair with the Great King’s sister and starting a feud with his younger brother Emanuel. The bullshit music that Friedemann and the Great King’s sister play on the fortepiano. Friedemann plays something that sounds like a parody of Chopin, and the Greate King’s sister plays something that sounds like Ryuichi Sakamoto’s Pieces. What the hell is this? worst of it all is the incomprehensible scene where the Great King and Bach, play the drums, blow the pan flute, and make a racket. Also, I don’t think it’s right that Bach can easily play the difficult Allegro theme of the “Musical Offering” by a flute. This is because, according to popular belief, Bach did not play the flute (or could not play the flute). Anyone who has seen Bach’s flute music will know that, unlike Telemann’s, Bach’s flute works are written in such a way as to completely ignore the “convenience of the performer”. #baroque #bach #片山俊幸
