Klarinet Archive - Posting 000687.txt from 1999/02

From: "Dan Leeson: LEESON@-----.edu>
Subj: [kl] A movie about a clarinet player
Date: Wed, 17 Feb 1999 17:34:58 -0500

Yesterday I got a film from the local BLOCKBUSTER video tape
center. The title is "Beyond Silence." It is in German with
subtitltes. The story has to do with a young woman clarinet
player.

The heroine is named Lara and she is the daughter of deaf parents.
As a child she is given a clarinet by her clarinet-playing aunt and
her talent begins to show itself. While the clarinet is the center
of activity and her playing gets better and better, it is not a
movie about clarinet playing and/or her technical skills. There is
little clarinet music that is at all familiar and Lara appears to
be more interested in melancholy tunes than in any of the
traditional repertoire that would be expected of a young girl about
to enter into the German Hochschule system. The difficulty with
Lara is that her parents have no way to hear what she does or the
extent of her talent, and this is the source of angst in the film.

In one wonderful scene, Lara goes to a concert and, before the
event takes place, she bumps into the clarinet soloist for that
concert. He is a klezmer player and they chat for a few moments
(in English). When the concert takes place, I knew in 3
milliseconds that the player was Giora Feidman because it was so
overwhelming. My guess was later confirmed by the credits.

Lara's audition for the conservatory is very strange and is the
ultimate scene in the movie. When asked by the faculty what she
wants to do with her playing she says (and this was the first time
that the subject came up) that she wants to be a klezmer player.
When asked why, she suggests that it is the emotion of the music
that attracts her. That struck me as disingenuous because her only
experience in the form had occurred just a few nights earlier when
she heard the Feidman concert (though Feidman himself was played by
an actor), and no previous klezmer music ever appeared to cross
Lara's path earlier in the movie. I found this out of character.

There were the traditional errors that occur with any actor miming
the playing of clarinet, but the most unusual thing was that she
was playing on a Selmer and in a French system, certainly a strange
choice for a German film. Lara's aunt is also very accomplished
and the two of them play a jazzy-boppy little duet in the film.
Lara's aunt is also gorgeous!

Lara is an enchanting person. She is talented, charming,
communicative, and very kind and protective of her deaf parents.
However, every time there is a school conference between her
parents and the teacher, Lara acts as the interpreted and she
deliberately misstates both what her parents are saying and what
the teacher is asking.

Her clarinet is never in the case and she never uses a cap. So how
come she sounds so good?

=======================================
Dan Leeson, Los Altos, California
leeson@-----.edu
=======================================

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Unsubscribe from Klarinet, e-mail: klarinet-unsubscribe@-----.org
Subscribe to the Digest: klarinet-digest-subscribe@-----.org
Additional commands: klarinet-help@-----.org
Other problems: klarinet-owner@-----.org