Hacker Cinema
All the Mornings of the World
Tous les matins du monde
1991 · Film · 115 min
Directed by Alain Corneau
Following the death of his wife, a renowned musician ostracises himself from the outer world and dedicates his life to music. However, his life changes when a young man approaches him to learn music.
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2 comments on Hacker News
I don't really know. Amadeus is my absolute favorite movie of all time, but it has been set around the music. Tous les Matins du Monde is another fond memory, but it's a biopic of Marin Marais, a composer. In Diva, the excerpt from La Wally works well. The Ride of the Valkyries (sp?) is of course famous, but not so impressive. Let's not forget 2001, a Space Oddyssey.
My favorite moment is literary. In one of Douglas Adams' books (Dirk Gently), someone hears fantastic music from some alien space station that he has to "destroy" in the past or something, altering the timeline of the universe, and thus losing the music. But then when he comes back, his girlfriend plays that same music on the cello. I copied this from the book:
His face was so amazed that she stopped playing the instant she saw him.
"What's wrong?" she said, alarmed.
"Where did you get that music?" said Richard in a whisper.
She shrugged. "Well, from the music shop," she said, puzzled. She wasn't being facetious, she simply didn't understand the question.
"What is it?"
"It's from this cantata I'm playing in in a couple of week," she said, "Bach, number six."
"Who wrote it?"
"Well, Bach I expect. If you think about it."
"Who?"
"Watch my lips. Bach. B-A-C-H. Johannes Sebastian. Remember?"
"No, never heard of him. Who is he? Did he write anything else?"
Susan put down her bow, propped up her cello, stood up and came over to him.
"Are you allright?" she said.
... [bit later, Richard calls his friend] ...
"Reg, the music -"
"Ah yes, I thought you'd be pleased. Took a bit of work, I can tell you. I saved only the tiniest scrap, of course, but even so I cheated. It was rather more than one man could actually do in a lifetime, but I don't suppose anybody will look at that too seriously."
There is a very important scene in "Tous les Matins du Monde" where Gerard Depardieu is pretending to play a Viola de Gamba. (Ancestor of the Cello) It's the climactic scene, actually.
This scene works very well for most people who have never played an instrument. Gerard Depardieu is considered a good actor by many, and he's doing all sorts of things right as far as that goes. However, people who have played an instrument often cringe when watching that scene, because it's glaringly obvious that Mr. Depardieu is not playing the instrument. He's faking it so badly, it makes many musicians consider the scene hoky and disappointing. (It's still a great movie, though.)
What's really interesting, is that musicians who know nothing about playing a Viola de Gamba can still tell. I play wind instruments, and my fingers are doing nothing that resembles what a bowed string player has to do. There is no resemblance at all -- some things are diametrically opposed, and while I do nothing like bowing, I also need to incorporate breathing to play, in a way which is not at all needed for playing a string. Yet I can still tell immediately. This difference is very stark, and you'd probably see much better discrimination in a double-blind test than with 128 bit MP3's versus 320 bits. Note that there is a well known mathematical and physiological basis for the latter.