proterozoic
A person wishing to see the stamp that imposture, venality, perfidy and lies put on a human face should only watch French historical dramas. Corrupt sybarites tiptoe around royal courts, wheezing under the weight of their wigs and lifestyles. Theirs are faces that sag with a permanent combination of distaste and craving; their very eyes can seduce and pollute with a single glance.This is one of the faces we see, in a long close-up, as the opening shot of this movie. Marin Marais is a greatly respected musician at the King's court, but he's seen better days, and dozes fitfully while his viola students argue about technique. He wakes and critiques every one of them pitilessly, then turns the lash upon himself. He tells them of a life spent in self-aware mediocrity next to an artist who possesses a purity and passion that can't be learned.This man is Marais's teacher – a fictionalized version of 17th-century musician Monsieur de Sainte-Colombe, who wrote great music for the viola. His beloved wife dies of an illness while he's entertaining nobility. Sainte-Colombe returns home, looks at her body and walks out of society with his two young daughters. They live cold and silent lives in the countryside, until a young man shows up for an apprenticeship and won't leave. He's capable enough on the instrument, but does he have the soul of an artist? Sainte-Colombe decides to teach him.The master doesn't speak in comprehensible sentences. The metaphors that make up his speech are disjointed dabs of emotion and color, like flat projections of an immeasurable and many-dimensional shape. His disciple certainly doesn't understand them, and has no adequate response. For Sainte-Colombe, words are a paltry and clumsy thing; music is the only way to express the ineffable – endless grief, impossible to describe, impossible to write about, impossible to film, finds an outlet in music. His bow cries and tears across the strings, and all the world's sorrow pours out. There's a good reason this soundtrack became one of France's best-sellers. Marin Marais is played first by Gerard Depardieu's son, and as he grows from a limber young man into a fat and powdered courtier, by Depardieu himself. He sincerely wants to live up to his master, but there are so many girls to chase, so many ladders to climb. He is a man of quick and shallow passions, and once he moves on, his old attachments become nothing but mild embarrassments. He is not an evil man, but his indifferent cruelty ends up leading to appallingly tragic results. "He didn't want to be a shoemaker" is one of the most heart-rending lines I've ever heard. In the end, which is the film's beginning, Marais is left with a life spent in pursuit of easy applause, asking his master's ghost for forgiveness.Tous les Matins du Monde is a rare film – capable of drawing us into a different consciousness, and helping us understand and appreciate something we had never contemplated before. It's a torrent of music and feeling, and there are no protective walls of irony around it. Whether you're interested in Baroque music, or merely the power of cinema, this one is worth seeing.
tintin-23
The film relates the real story of Monsieur de Sainte Colombe, one of the most renowned viol players of the 17th Century, with a few fictitious anecdotes added to make it more interesting.The dialogue is simple, using our contemporary vocabulary, but the turn of the phrases are typical of 17th Century parlance, whose style recalls the writings of the French dramatists of that epoch, like Pierre Corneille or Jean Racine. The whole story is told from Marin Marais' point of view.The music, intimately linked to the story, also provides a rhythm. Almost every scene has to do with music, unless it provides an explanation. Along the way, we are treated to some great music: the little known music of Sainte Colombe, that of Marin Marais, both exquisitely played by Jordi Savall, but also the music of Jean-Baptiste Lully (his rousing "March for the Turks' Ceremony"), of Francois Couperin, and of Jordi Savall himself.The two characters, Monsieur de Sainte Colombe and Marin Marais, differ wildly from one another in their physical appearances, personalities, and manners. Sainte Colombe is a Jansenist, stern, taciturn, and somewhat old fashioned, and he chooses a life of a recluse upon his wife's death. His only effective means of expression is his music. Sainte Colombe's house is calm, rustic: it's the country. Marin Marais is young, ambitious, and sees a career in music as a way to change his social class, and he is ruthless in his pursuit of his aims. Marais' residence is in Versailles, at the Court of Louis XIV, with all its brilliance, luxuries and happenings.The actual playing of the viol by the two protagonists could not be more different: Marin Marais' playing is dexterous, and a display of its virtuosity, in search for an audience's approval, while Sainte Colombe's is inspired, passionate and full of sorrows. Savall was careful in his choices of the pieces to be played by the two characters in order to illustrate their different approaches to music.Gerard Depardieu's son, Guillaume, just starting in his acting career, interprets Marin Marais as a young man. He succeeds well at projecting the character of a somewhat shallow but determined young man. Gerard Depardieu appears in the first six minutes of the film, and later toward the end of the film as the mature Marin Marais. His acting is conveying the depressed state of mind of Marais in a convincing manner. Throughout the film, the voice-over gives a sense of nostalgia and regret to the story. But it is Jean-Pierre Marielle's performance which steals the show. He is just outstanding as the austere, taciturn Jansenist. Anne Brochet's acting is delicate, as a simple and sincere young woman, and Carole Richert, as her sister, is convincing as an easygoing Toinette. Violaine Lacroix and Nadège Teron, in their roles as the two daughters in their earlier years, were an inspired choice. Their personalities and acting well defines the differences in the characters of the two sisters, which are later developed by Brochet and Richert.The film also pays tribute to 17th Century painting. Lubin Baugin, a Jansenist friend of Sainte Colombe, famous for his still lifes, paints the pictures "Still Life with Wafers" and "Still Life on the Chessboard." Also, one cannot watch this film without comparing Yves Angelo's gorgeous cinematography to the chiaroscuro paintings of Georges de la Tour. Angelo's images are stunning in rendering this effect in the interior scenes.Alain Corneau's many close-up shots and extreme close-up shots bring intimacy between the characters and the viewer, producing an intimate contact with the actors' deepest feelings, which could not possibly be rendered by dialogue. This requires the outstanding acting of the two actor-musicians, especially during their music-playing scenes.The film is an ode to the inner beauty and the meaning of music, and its main theme is the love of music. All the characters in the film are connected to music. At first, there is a divergence of views between the two protagonists as to the purpose of music and of being a musician. However, Savall chose "Le tombeau des regrets," the piece Sainte Colombe composed for his dead wife, for Marais' "last/first" lesson from his Master, which they play together in a mutual understanding. Their antagonism resolves itself in a final confrontation, which turns out to be a reconciliation, as Marais finally understand the true meaning of music and that of being a musician.Another theme is Death. The first images of Sainte Colombe, showing him playing his viol at the bedside of his dead friend, identify him with funeral music. This baroque theme of the juxtaposition of life and death permeates the whole film. The type of painting by Lubin Baugin ("Still Life on the Chessboard") was called a "vanity," a popular genre in the Baroque era, especially in Holland, and had a symbolic value connected to the Ecclesiastic quotation "vanitas vanitatis," -- vanity of vanity, all is vanity, which is in keeping with this particular theme. The message is to meditate on the world's pleasure as death threatens. The opposition between life and death appears in the duality between the two sisters; one chooses life and the other chooses death. The wife's death leads Sainte Colombe to close himself from the world and compose "Le tombeau des regrets." And it is Madeleine's death which leads Marais to reaching his full potential as a composer. As such, death proves to be a source of life, and art makes it possible to revive the beloved. As Orpheus with his lyre, Sainte Colombe with his viol is able to recall his dead wife from Hades.All the Mornings of the World is an exquisite film, with great acting, great cinematography and atmosphere, and of course great music, which will certainly appeal to music and history enthusiasts, but also to people eager for new aesthetic experiences.
