Testimony - Tony Palmer's Story of Shostakovich / Ben Kingsley

Description

Testimony is one of those comparatively rare events nowadays - a real piece of cinema. Tony Palmer's prowess as an editor, his knack of juxtaposing image and music - something which has remained his forte since he first caused a stir back in the Sixties with Buddhist monks burning to The Beatles - has a field day in Testimony. Most importantly for a movie about a composer, there is always the feeling that Palmer understands the music. For a start he puts to rest the hoary old cliché that the private Shostakovich is only to be found in his chamber music - try listening to the Seventh, Eighth, Ninth and Fourteenth symphonies - but he also brings vividly alive musical details (like the composer's use of unison scoring) in colour sequences showing the orchestra, as in the climax of the Fifth..... a truly remarkable film. Starring Ben Kingsley.

Customer Reviews:

Shostakovich via cinema verite merged with music video.......2007-08-21

Anyone expecting a literal retelling of tales from Solomon Volkov's book "Testimony" is going to be disappointed and bewildered by Tony Palmer's cinematic account, for this is more a 150-minute metaphor and music video than narrative of the life and times of DSCH.

Make no mistake, this is a stunning piece of cinema verite, an art form described in one place as, "A form of entertainment that enacts a story by sound and a sequence of images giving the illusion of continuous movement." The scenes in this film comprise all the important moments of Shostakovich's life -- his student years in academy with Glazunov, the success of his student Symphony No. 1, his fear after Stalin's denigration of Lady McBeth of Minsk, his friendships with Tukaschevsky and Meyerhold, the make-good symphony No. 5, "an artist's reply to just criticism", a funny scene about the wartime "Leningrad" symphony and his famous firehat episode that got him on the cover of Time, his 1948 denunciation by Zhdanov at the musical congress, his home life with Nina, Galya and Maxim and the adults ongoing paranoia that a nighttime knock on the door would take him away at any moment.

Yes, the sequences are all there. But to say they are comprehenisve or fleshed out, as they are in the book, would be a mistake. Like Ben Kingsley's portrayal of the composer, these scenes are riveting but superfluous; they tend to last only a few minutes and are often accompanied or followed by bleeding chunks of Shostakovich's music, which is really the star of the program. At other times, newsreel footage of the era is interspersed to accompany the music, much as it did in the oustanding 2005 DVD "Shostakovich Against Stalin: The War Symphonies" (ASIN: B000BLBZM0) with grainy black and white photography adding artistry and affect.

So it's better to think of this as a work of cinematic art than a movie. It's better yet to consider it a music video accompanied by real and acted scenes of Shostakovich's epoch. While Kingsley always comes off well as the composer and the other actors variably fulfill their requirements, I did not find the portrayal of Josef Stalin meaningful or dimensional. The best scene about him was one where Shostakovich was laughing aloud at home the day he died, joyful that he outlived the dictator as he considered attending Prokofiev's funeral instead of Stalin's since the two died on the same day in 1953.

Still, taken in its totality, this English production is a compelling document that lies somewhere between the documentary value of "Shostakovich Against Stalin" and the value of a fully-fledged Hollywood biopic of the composer such as "Amadeus". Anyone that has not read the book on which the film is loosely based, or anyone not familiar with the background of the Soviet composer, will be almost completely lost most of the time because there is never 5 minutes of uninterrupted narrative on which to understand the storyline. In fact, the concept of storyline is often unapparent.

Shostakovich's music is generously presented and well-produced throughout the film. The London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Rudolf Barshai give bleeding chunks of Symphonies 1, 4, 7-9 and 11-14 with selections from the latter choral symphonies ably sung by John Shirley-Quirk and Felicity Palmer. Conductors Kyril Kondrashin and Karel Ancerl lead sections of the Symphonies 5 and 10, respectively, while luminaries and lesser known artists perform sections from Lady McBeth from Minsk, the Michaelangelo sonnets, Jazz Suites 1 and 2, Violin Concerto No. 1, Piano Concerto No. 2 and the String Quartets 8 and 10, one of which closes the program over credits. There is a selection from Mozart in there, too.

By far, the most unusual thing about this film is its timing. The box and Amazon promotion both suggest the film runs 1 hour 51 minutes. However, my DVD player said this film ran 2:26 with 4 minutes of credits. Never have I gotten a DVD with such a difference between the posted and actual timing, which I confirmed by looking at the clock in my house.

Really awful.......2007-06-05

I wanted to like this film but it is long and boring. Ben Kingsley did a nice job with what he had but this movie is ill-conceived. There are lots of shots of machinery, train engines and molten steel set to Shostakovich's music. The integration of black and white with color did not help. This is only for the really hard-core Shostakovich fan and then don't expect many insights. I want my 2 1/2 hours back !

Great Film of a Great Composer, but...........2006-10-29

... the video transfer appears to be absolutely awful. It looks like it might have been transferred from video table instead of from the original negative or even a good print. In order to squeeze a movie that is more than two hours long onto a single-sided DVD they must have used lower quality compression. Rather expensive for a DVD of such low quality.

If you haven't seen the movie before and you love Shostakovich, buy a used copy, save your money, and enjoy. You won't be disappointed.

Cinematic work of art captures Shostakovich's art and times........2006-10-01

In addition to faithfully capturing Shostakovich's inner life as revealed in the composer's memoirs, this film is a wonderful cinematic work of art in its own right. Unlike most filmed biographies which take pains to introduce every character and explain every event, this film assumes that viewers are already familiar with Shostakovich's life and the events and people that surrounded him. This is just one of the many elements that helps to lift this film above the level of the typical, dumbed-down biopic.

I taped this film when it was shown on TV years ago and have been waiting for a DVD release for the longest time. I don't have this DVD, so I can't comment on the transfer, but I will say that a copy of this film belongs in the library of everyone concerned with Shostakovich. I guarantee that if you love Shostakovich, you will love this film.

This DVD will, no doubt, come under attack by the same forces that have attacked the composers memoirs. Apologists for the Soviet state were upset that Shostakovich's memoirs showed that he was not a faithful party member whose work blossomed under communist rule. Shostakovich's memoirs showed, on the contrary, that he hated the brutal regime and that his work was a testimony to the tens of millions slaughtered by the workers paradise. Practically every family member and friend of Shostakovich has gone on record as stating that the printed memoirs do indeed reflect the thoughts and feelings of the composer.

Great film but a terrible dvd.......2006-09-28

The image quality of this dvd is so bad that even the VHS copy I taped years ago from Dutch television is much better. Absolutely no image restoration! But a great film though. I hope there will be a better version in the future to do this film justice.

Rob Kwak.

Average customer rating:

MARY MAGDALEN: An Intimate Portrait
Starring: Mary Magdelen-Intimate Portrait
Manufacturer: View Video
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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ASIN: B000GAKE0A
Release Date: 2006-06-26

Description

She stood by the cross after His male disciples had fled. She watched His body laid to rest, fearless in her grief. On the third day, it was to her that Jesus first appeared. Some say she was the closest to Jesus of all his followers. But others called her a prostitute.

Who was Mary Magdalen? Was she the love of Jesus' life or simply the strongest of his followers? How did she become the bad girl of the Bible...the forbidden woman...the saint who was made into a prostitute?

Customer Reviews:

A Godard Admirer.......2004-05-11

FROM THE BACK COVER:
"WANT TO BUY SOME ILLUSIONS?
Magdalen is a tavern Scheherazade, a prostitute who sells stories in a seedy Philadelphia dive bar. Her clients include Mr. Jones (HORRIBLE acting!), an angry black businessman who wants to hear the same graphic, sexual fantasy every night; Jace, a droll, Mishima-loving slacker/writer looking for an ending to his novel; Phil, a precocious skater-boy who wants to understand his dead father; and Edward, a shy 53-year-old virgin looking for love.
Alix D. Smith is Magdalen McElhinney, a tough, brainy femme noir, whose name suggests that the film's director is the father she talks about obsessively. In a solo session with a video camera, Magdalen's one stab at self-narration rapidly morphs from self-portrait into a portrait of the filmmaker - brillant, destructive, god-identified, narcissistic and absent from her existence.
Littered with literary and cinematic allusions, the film's unreliable narrators make Magdalen part Warholian confessional and part Brechtian taproom comedy."

This film tries really hard to be smart and sometimes succeeds, mostly, through the efforts of Alix D. Smith's droll, deadpan, world-weary delivery. She is the best part of Magdalen.

I enjoy films that attempt to interject philosophical ideas into, or at least, in support of, the story and I give credit to McElhinney's script. The scene where Magdalen interviews McElhinney is interesting.

Although McElhinney dedicates this film to Louis Feuillade, (Les Vampires - by the way, a MASTERPIECE!! and whose film making history dates back to 1906 and over 700 films), Magdalen has the "FEEL" of a Jean-Luc Godard French New Wave film such as: Band Of Outsiders, Les Carabiniers, My Life To Live (before any Godard fanatics claim blasphemy, please note I said -FEEL- of course, it does not even come CLOSE to any of Godards films!).

However, where Godard always, masterfully succeeds and excels with interlacing philosophical dialogs with, sometimes, banal plot devices, McElhinney seems to just throw stuff out and see if it sounds profound (even so, it's worthy of a look).

The DVD is acceptable in overall quality, although he sure could have used a compressor to edit out the annoying hiss throughout the film.

Overall Quality of DVD: **1/2 /**** Sound: *1/2 /**** Plot: **1/2 /**** Acting: **/**** Cinematography: **/**** Direction: **1/2 /****

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His Last Days ~ Jesus Christ (Bible) [Import, All-region] (Dvd)

Manufacturer: CD Town
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

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Product Features:

Import from Korea made to be played on dvd players in the USA/Canada/Korea (NTSC, All-Region)

English soundtrack with subtitle option (English and Korean)

ASIN: B000N3NG1E

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