Ariana B

Beautiful picture, lovely music an interesting watch and good try at bringing this Composer's story to life of whom I did not know much about. I would recommend people to watch this film. My pet peeves are more with directing choices. Firstly, they're not speaking French, they don't even have French accents, they're British. I get it's easier to portray to larger audiences, and there's been surveys that Americans hate subtitles on films so money wise I get it, but definitely felt lazy and detracted from the authenticity/believability. ***SPOILER ALERT*** . . The most stupid line was "the preferred language is French here" and they literally just say about 4 french words the entire film. I also thought it surprising that half way through we learn Joseph knows several languages implying he knows more than just french and English. One thing I understand and didn't mind too much is that the main musician characters are not actually playing the instruments, but you could see for main scenes/shots they had trained and rehearsed a lot to match the sound. I always prefer real musicians/playing but of course that's difficult to cast for sometimes, so I thought the directing around that was well executed especially with the variety of shots, with pans around the back of the musician to reduce the room for error in mismatched playing. I think it would have been great to see his start in the regiment, they did a "some time later" transition so they could have done a few flashes of the later events and final facts, overlayed with the music as it builds to the finale without it being a drastic change in style. I think overall this film has achieved the purpose in highlighting this historical figure and leaves the viewer wanting to know more which is not a bad thing in this case!