Given our modern sensibilities with respect to the role of women in society and, lest we be labeled Calibans, it is no great effort to overlook the anachronism and give the nod to the female copyist at the start of this movie. Not five minutes later, though, we are asked to completely strain the boundaries of credulity and accept that the creativity of the second greatest composer ever to have lived (Mahler being the first) owed its triumph to a twenty-three-year-old inexperienced female "secretary".
It is at this point one realizes that the creation of the Ninth Symphony is a patina, a mere plot device, for the true substance of the movie which is Beethoven's suppressed twentieth century feminist ideology. Alas, if only the maestro himself had realized how truly ahead of his time he was! Is it really only twenty years ago we discovered Beethoven was black?
...and yet, if you love Beethoven, it is all about the music. Whatever the historical flaws in this movie, the anticipation engendered when the Ninth begins and the excitement bursting within as the choristers intone "Freude, schöener Götterfunken" of Schiller's Ode to Joy; any misgivings about the picture are completely over-shadowed by the music itself. Which says more about Beethoven's lasting genius than modern movie-making "talent" ever could.
