Die Stille vor Bach

A truly cinematographic film about beauty in its purest forms: Bach's music, silence, human conversation, the human body, music instruments... Everything is shown with good taste, as if everything could represent beauty itself, even mechanical devices, old river boats or trucks painted with religious icons.

The movie itself is conceived as a music work: tensions are created and released (or not) or reformulated, there are visual leit motivs and textual leit motivs (for instance, the same words spoken by two different characters, centuries apart, in different scenes). There are reflections on music, on its formal aspect, on its almost divine reach.

A film about music through music, about beauty through beauty, self-referential and self- conscious. Humble, austere, simple and witty at the same time, like Bach's variations or Vermeer's paintings: cinematographic poetry can not get much better than that.

Too bad if it is not released on DVD: the producers and director should think better. Some people don't go to cinema just because they are ill or unluckily confined: they, too, have the right to enjoy a work of art. Isn't the director a left-wing intellectual?