IF YOU'RE searching for a reason to attend this largely risible dramatisation of Ludwig van Beethoven's final days, you should be aware that it features a fascinating collision between two very different - positively complementary - schools of terrible acting.
Ed Harris, a performer who, when fully unfettered, stinks quite pungently of ham, munches through entire suburbs of Budapest in his attempt to convey the torments that genius (and deafness) imposed on the composer. Meanwhile, Diane Kruger, more of a vapour in a dress than a sentient actor, melts unnoticed into the cardboard furnishings, dusty drapes and other pieces of theatrical decoration.
Agnieszka Holland's film offers an experience similar to that you might expect from a prizefight between a demented rhinoceros and a small pot of raspberry yoghurt. Harris and Kruger do not appear to be in the same movie. Forget that. They look as if they are moving through separate universes.
Borrowing ideas and shots from Milos Foreman's overrated Amadeus, the film follows Anna Holtz, a student of musical composition, as she is sent to the great composer's chambers to help transcribe his work. Her casual manner and unexpected engender disgusts old Ludwig but - this being a movie - he eventually comes to regard her as a friend and confidante.
Holland, the director of Europa, Europa, does seem to have a decent grasp of the dynamics of the master's music, and she does manage a few decent passages in which notable compositions provide a backdrop to scenes of Viennese bustle. But every time the characters open their mouths Copying Beethoven lurches back towards unintentional comedy.
"You build bridges between stretches of land," Harris, speaking in the distant tone that characterises Europudding post-synch dialogue, bellows at Anna's engineer boyfriend. "I build bridges between men souls."
At such moments I recalled an ancient Dave Allen sketch in which the comedian, wearing
a wig no more ludicrous than Harris's, played a furious version of Beethoven rendered deaf by his cleaning lady's incessant Hoovering. The sketch was more realistic than Holland's film, but not nearly as funny.
