Chroniken der Anna Magdalena Bach
Instead of looking for movies to see, all I can do is look for which talks I want to go to at my next conference – how sad. As much as I love movie theater experiences, I do not mind seeing films at home. There are a bunch of movies in my life which have managed to touch me despite having seen them on TV or just on a small monitor.
“Chroniken der Anna Magdalena Bach” is definitely a small monitor movie, although a good sound system definitely helps. It’s a lot like watching a symphony performance on a screen. I was quite amazed. It might look like a dry and “boring” movie, but compared with a symphony orchestra performance, it’s as exciting as “The Dark Knight”. I might be the only person in this world who likes this movie, but I certainly did. It made me get extremely interested in Bach again! I read up on his sons, who – unsurprisingly – also played a fairly important role in the Bach couple’s life.
Let this be a warning. The film is nothing like an actual biopic, and quite different from most movies. It looks very austere, stern and clean, and the voice-over in which Anna Magdalena Bach narrates her life sounds odd, because the language used is old, and the voice is impressively monotone. What keeps me up from falling asleep indeed was the music. I know almost nothing about Bach’s life and never really liked to play him. Bach’s pieces look easy and boring, yet they were awfully hard to play precisely because of that. It is not emotions in the romantic style which could tell you how to play something, and I thought it was hard to get into the “mood” to play Bach. Why does everybody I know like Bach so much? This film gives me some sort of an answer – after listening to Bach’s music for roughly 1 1/2 hours, I come to the conclusion that there is something strangely beautiful about it. It makes me happy and a little solemn to listen to it, and I think this little film is a great tribute to Bach.
I remember that Gorp, who loves Straub-Huillet, did not recommend this film to me. But it’s on Netflix and I was extremely curious, so I couldn’t resist. And now I am surprised at how much I liked it! (You probably won’t, but that’s fine.) I must go and do research on Bach now.
lmao i love your love for this! i think i was bored by the film. i remember one really, really impressive shot – in a church, with the musicians flooded in light – but apart from that not much else stuck with me. these are filmmakers where it is extremely hard to recommend anything from, for sure. there is a great variety to their filmography though, IMO, which might also not seem obvious at first. of those films by them i’ve actually seen (around 15 i guess?) my favorites are
Der Bräutigam, die Komödiantin und der Zuhälter – a short film featuring Fassbinder, and one of the most incredible tracking shots i know (it involves a car, munich(?) by night and also Bach!).
Geschichtsunterricht – an incredibly strange and really beautiful “adaptation” of Die Geschäfte des Herrn Julius Caesar. i think the way they interpreted the book onto film is sheer genius (having a modern man meet up with the antique characters in modern-day rome).
Von Heute auf Morgen – this is shot by my favorite cinematrographer (William Lubtchansky) and it speaks for the variety in their work, like i mentioned above. i have no interest in Schönberg’s music whatsoever, but they make this interpretation so unique to their own style and personalities that it seems a perfect fit. Incidentally, i didn’t care much for their other Schönberg film Moses & Aaron, even though it had some of the most eccentric and complex camera-work i’ve seen.
i really recommend you to see Pedro Costa’s amazing documentary on their editing a film together, which is really very, very eye-opening in a sense and highly enjoyable.
naturally, i love Godard, but I also kinda love/agree to a certain extent with this quote by Costa: “Godard seemed very old to me, suddenly, when I saw […] the films of Straub. They were the fastest, the furiousest, the most beautiful, sensual, ancient, modern.”
I want to see all of those! Maybe one day I must procure your Straub-Huillet collection after all. XD
Yeah, I agree that my incredible love for this movie makes absolutely no sense, hahahaha. This movie is kind of special, I guess, and I think it is miraculous how calming I thought it was. Perhaps I do have a special interest in Bach though – I could not imagine any such interest for Schönberg. I have never really heard any Schönberg, yet I know a lot about his music from a theoretical level. (And it scares me haha.) I even know a few things about his life, like how his wife and Richard Gerstl had this love affair which ended up the latter’s suicide. In comparison, I knew almost nothing about Bach but I had to listen and play his music a lot back in the day – hence the interest.