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"The Red Violin is a beautiful new award-winning film of great drama and emotion, with a stunning soundtrack from major contemporary composer John Corigliano that features a brilliant performance from violinist Joshua Bell. The film was released by Lion’s Gate Films on June 11, 1999 in New York and Los Angeles, and opened in wide release in the following weeks. A tale filled with passion, pageantry, tragedy, romance, adventure and intrigue, The Red Violin centers around a contemporary auction in which a priceless violin with an infamous past is placed on the block. As the bidding mounts, the story flashes back to signature chapters in the violin’s history and the inevitable impact it had on all those who possessed it. From its creation in 17th-century Italy, to the court of imperial Vienna in the 1790s, to Victorian England in the late 1800s, to the People’s Republic of China in the mid-1960s, the dramatic story spans continents and sweeps centuries. At the center of the story is a dark secret that is only revealed at the film’s suspenseful and sensational finale."
More than anything else, the movie V for Vendetta caused me to think about issues of art, language, individuality, purpose and fear. One should look at the film as an avenue to explore a whole number of concepts, both believable and unbelievable. As a final remark…
Notes scribbled on toilet paper can be a lifeline to others! (this, as it relates with an image in the movie) Tell people that you love them! Don’t hesitate for fear of being ‘forward’ or out-of-line. Just say it!
I thought to make a phone call just a short while ago, but hesitated. Mary Lee, 91, passed away…slipped out of our lives just yesterday morning on her sofa in her own home. I know that she realized I loved her…but I ignored an opportunity to say that. Listen to your heart.
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V for Vendetta
The movie this family attended this afternoon was V for Vendetta. Powerful! and for an assortment of reasons!
The first link offers a very brief synopsis and some clips.
The next one offers a refreshing-although-one-sided analysis of the concepts/ideas that get labeled Orwellian in the first.
While the second link and the ensuing commentaries seem to be an open forum for political ‘rant’…(and I love it), I have a few of my own perceptions, if not about the politics of the film concept, then about’the arts and people’.
Much like Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 541, we are asked as an audience to think about the role that books, paintings, sculpture and music have on a culture…what strength civilization has gathered from their relationship with the arts. When our lives are stripped of this relationship, do we lose our voice? Do we lose an essential component of the human spirit?
Another film comes to mind…The Red Violin, a film by Francois Girard, captures a time in the People’s Republic of China in the 1960s when the freedom of artistic expression was dramatically controlled by the government.