From the man who directed Candyman and the music video for Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s “Relax” single (!), comes this classical variation on Welles’ Citizen Kane. Rose’s film has already been accused of playing fast and loose with the known historical facts, but not being an expert in the life of Ludwig Van, I’ll keep quiet on that. When Ludwig van Beethoven (played by Oldman, who seems to have developed quite a knack for carrying on under cumbersome, old-age prosthetics) died in 1827, he left behind a mysterious postscript to his formal last will: a note bequeathing his entire estate to “My angel, my all, my other self… my Immortal Beloved.” No name was mentioned on the parchment and that’s the mystery that propels the movie’s plot. The Maestro’s friend and secretary, Anton Schindler (Krabbé of King of the Hill) embarks on a journey to discover just who — or what — this “Rosebud,” uh, “Immortal Beloved” is. The search reunites him with the various women in Beethoven’s life (and, apparently, the composer was no slouch, on or off the bench) — Anna Marie Erdody (Rossellini), a Hungarian “countess”; Johanna Reiss (Ter Steege), the wife of Beethoven’s younger brother Caspar (Christopher Fulford); and a woman apparently despised by Beethoven, Giulietta Guicciardi (Golino), one of the Maestro’s early flames. Slowly (and, at times, cumbersomely), the mystery is revealed to the diligent Schindler, although, in reality, Immortal Beloved’s identity remains an enigma. Rose gamely tries to cram his film full of lush romanticism, and why not? What could be more romantic than this lovely mystery for the ages? Well… Oldman behaves in a nicely tortured manner throughout, all eager genius and deafened lunatic. To his credit, Rose takes us into the composer’s shattered internal soundscapes — even his most glorious works are little more than muffled clumpings in a darkened room to Ludwig, who apparently lost his hearing during a severe beating courtesy of his drunken father. Despite Oldman’s bravura performance, however, you walk away from Immortal Beloved with the distinct feeling that you’ve just been had. Rose’s spastic heartstring-yanking toward the end of the movie doesn’t help any, either. It is, in the end, no more than a nice, fluffy, heavily romanticized stab at an already disputed history.
This article appears in January 6 • 1995 (Cover).