Image copyright © by Marcus Trahan

Chopin: Desire for Love

(Chopin: Pragnienie milosci, Poland, 2002)

I have no idea if Mozart was a supremely talented but obnoxious fellow as portrayed so well by Tom Hulce in Amadeus … but who cares? The story was wonderful, dense, clever, and moving. It worked, dramatically.

I don’t know if Chopin was a fiery, moody, stud-muffin, as he is portrayed in this awful biopic, either, but none of it worked. All the dialogue is stilted, cornball, trite, and most of it is shouted. Lee and I debated whether or not to rent this, worried about the last part of the title. Sounds awful hokey. In the end, we did rent it, because of the first part of the title. I mean, we asked ourselves, with all that wonderful music by Chopin and Liszt and others, how bad could it be? Answer: very bad. We didn’t finish it.