Let's start with the positive aspects: the soundtrack is of course beautiful (altough it can get overbearing sometimes), and one can hear 17th century music at its finest, but to those who are drawn to the film for this aspect, I would rather tell them to hear it independently of the accompanying visuals, since those don't do it any favours. The cinematography and visuals are also gorgeus: some shots look like flemish paintings in their own right, and the costums and locations are well put together and chosen. Overall, coupled with the narration at the very beginning, one tends to thing that this will be a very Barry Lyndon-like movie, as some other reviewer already stated, but it fails miserably along the way. Let me try to explain this.
First of all, the narrative structure of the film. Narration is a very dangerous tool for filmaking, a double edged knife that may aswell end up cutting the rope the films hang on. As I see, it should work as a narrative thread that helps the movie move along, but doesn't overpower the scenes as a narrative device. To sum it up, it should act as an arrow that points the right way, but everything that the narrator states should be backed up (or contested, if we are talking about an unreliable one) by visual evidence, or should be somehow shown in the film. Following up with the previous examples, Barry Lyndon is a film that does this really well, keeping up with the previous example. With Tous les Matins du Monde, however, the opposite happens: a lot of vital information is delivered through narration (which becames exposition, and a really tedious one, by the end of the film), and often it's not backed up by any kind of visual evidence or scene.
There are many instances in the film where this happens, but I will remark the most blatant and significant one: Sainte-Colombe's. Why is this a problem? Well, because she's already dead by the beginning of the film. Thus, we are deprived of a very important component of the viola player's life: his relationship with his wife (the only aspect that defines his character, along with his relationship with his music). And this relaionship is central to the plot, for Sainte-Colombe was purportedly very fond of his wife, and its implied that he had a better self, prior to his old, bitter and maniac one, when his wife was alive. By not showing us this previous life and happy relation with his wife (which her ghostly apparitions fail to tackle) and having the narrator, Marais, explain it to us, it turns out that we, us viewers, haven't got the chance to see the supposed better Sainte-Colombe. Instead, we only see and emotionally impaired and egotistical man, who fails to take care of his daughters and cultivate any human relation and refuses to get over the death of his wife.
And this takes us to the second aspect of this film that I must criticize: the character. Sainte-Colombe comes across as a total douche. He is cruel towards his daughter, towards his disciple and towards his sourroundings in general, charching his family with the maintenance of his property. Instead of a tormented artist, which is what the directors where going for, I assume, we get a rude and unsympathetic man, whose only redeeming trait is that he plays the viola well, which, ultimately, fails to excuse his harmful behaviour or making up for it any way (and no, letting Marais talk to him doesn't count. Basic civility isn't redemption). As for their daughters, which are consistently mistreated by their male counterparts, first their father and then, in the case of poor Madeleine, by his lover, Marais, we never see them have any significant agency or stand up for themselves (except when child Toinette confronts her father with her infantile tantrums). We know they are skilled players and that they lead a restrictive and secluded live, and are in desperate need for same human interaction, but Corneau doesn't seem to care too much about their character or personal growth. Had we seen a movie were one of the daughters, maybe, stood up to him and tried to pursue a music career without the approval of their father, or where Madeleine found solace in music after she was left by Marais, this movie could have been a lot more interesting. I want to make clear these comments don't apply to the actors: I think they did a god job with the material they were given, and Anne Brochet's Madeleine and Dépardieu junior's Marais (who turns out to be the most relatable character in the whole movie) are pretty solid.
And this leads me to the last part of the movie: the script and the pacing. Since part of the narrative weight is carried by the narration, and part of it by the music (which, again, does a god joob but ends up being overbearing at times, and doesn't keep a tangible structure while the movie goes on), the dialogue is much more reduced and most of the spoken text is narrated. Both, however, are really poor. The philosopical excerpts of it are substanceless: the reflections upon the nature of music are too poetic and vague, and the conclusion the movie ends up giving (music, and maybe any form of art, is the result of loss and suffering) is questionable at best. I do not agree with the stance that music is something that is only achieved through loss or "genius", and that the music that Sainte-Colombe plays is somehow better that what his disciple plays, simply because one is trying to express is unfathomable grief and the other tries to express love or be a better musician for the sake of social success, and the movie doens't give any consistent or grounded answer for this, beyond the consistent negative of Sainte-Colombe to talk about it. And, since the movie is trying really hard to sell us this "tormented artist" and "music comes through grief" narrative, many of the scenes end up being supposedly intense scenes of Sainte-Colombe playing is viola or an emotional scene that doesn't hold much narrative weight and goes on much too long (like the one shot of Depardieu's face, right from the start). Thus, the narrative pace is ruined, and a film that otherwise could have been a pleasure to watch ends up being really tortuous. I generally like slow-paced films, but every film needs a narrative thread that carries it along. Here they tried to do it with the music, but it wasn't nearly enough.
Summing up, look it up if you really are into the music or the visuals and have some patience, what I wouldn't reccomend it do to the bad work the film does story and character-wise. I understand why some people liked it and glossed over the negative aspects I mentioned, but I wasn't able to. It's a shame, though, that it turned out like this, since it could really have been a much greater film.
First of all, the narrative structure of the film. Narration is a very dangerous tool for filmaking, a double edged knife that may aswell end up cutting the rope the films hang on. As I see, it should work as a narrative thread that helps the movie move along, but doesn't overpower the scenes as a narrative device. To sum it up, it should act as an arrow that points the right way, but everything that the narrator states should be backed up (or contested, if we are talking about an unreliable one) by visual evidence, or should be somehow shown in the film. Following up with the previous examples, Barry Lyndon is a film that does this really well, keeping up with the previous example. With Tous les Matins du Monde, however, the opposite happens: a lot of vital information is delivered through narration (which becames exposition, and a really tedious one, by the end of the film), and often it's not backed up by any kind of visual evidence or scene.
There are many instances in the film where this happens, but I will remark the most blatant and significant one: Sainte-Colombe's. Why is this a problem? Well, because she's already dead by the beginning of the film. Thus, we are deprived of a very important component of the viola player's life: his relationship with his wife (the only aspect that defines his character, along with his relationship with his music). And this relaionship is central to the plot, for Sainte-Colombe was purportedly very fond of his wife, and its implied that he had a better self, prior to his old, bitter and maniac one, when his wife was alive. By not showing us this previous life and happy relation with his wife (which her ghostly apparitions fail to tackle) and having the narrator, Marais, explain it to us, it turns out that we, us viewers, haven't got the chance to see the supposed better Sainte-Colombe. Instead, we only see and emotionally impaired and egotistical man, who fails to take care of his daughters and cultivate any human relation and refuses to get over the death of his wife.
And this takes us to the second aspect of this film that I must criticize: the character. Sainte-Colombe comes across as a total douche. He is cruel towards his daughter, towards his disciple and towards his sourroundings in general, charching his family with the maintenance of his property. Instead of a tormented artist, which is what the directors where going for, I assume, we get a rude and unsympathetic man, whose only redeeming trait is that he plays the viola well, which, ultimately, fails to excuse his harmful behaviour or making up for it any way (and no, letting Marais talk to him doesn't count. Basic civility isn't redemption). As for their daughters, which are consistently mistreated by their male counterparts, first their father and then, in the case of poor Madeleine, by his lover, Marais, we never see them have any significant agency or stand up for themselves (except when child Toinette confronts her father with her infantile tantrums). We know they are skilled players and that they lead a restrictive and secluded live, and are in desperate need for same human interaction, but Corneau doesn't seem to care too much about their character or personal growth. Had we seen a movie were one of the daughters, maybe, stood up to him and tried to pursue a music career without the approval of their father, or where Madeleine found solace in music after she was left by Marais, this movie could have been a lot more interesting. I want to make clear these comments don't apply to the actors: I think they did a god job with the material they were given, and Anne Brochet's Madeleine and Dépardieu junior's Marais (who turns out to be the most relatable character in the whole movie) are pretty solid.
And this leads me to the last part of the movie: the script and the pacing. Since part of the narrative weight is carried by the narration, and part of it by the music (which, again, does a god joob but ends up being overbearing at times, and doesn't keep a tangible structure while the movie goes on), the dialogue is much more reduced and most of the spoken text is narrated. Both, however, are really poor. The philosopical excerpts of it are substanceless: the reflections upon the nature of music are too poetic and vague, and the conclusion the movie ends up giving (music, and maybe any form of art, is the result of loss and suffering) is questionable at best. I do not agree with the stance that music is something that is only achieved through loss or "genius", and that the music that Sainte-Colombe plays is somehow better that what his disciple plays, simply because one is trying to express is unfathomable grief and the other tries to express love or be a better musician for the sake of social success, and the movie doens't give any consistent or grounded answer for this, beyond the consistent negative of Sainte-Colombe to talk about it. And, since the movie is trying really hard to sell us this "tormented artist" and "music comes through grief" narrative, many of the scenes end up being supposedly intense scenes of Sainte-Colombe playing is viola or an emotional scene that doesn't hold much narrative weight and goes on much too long (like the one shot of Depardieu's face, right from the start). Thus, the narrative pace is ruined, and a film that otherwise could have been a pleasure to watch ends up being really tortuous. I generally like slow-paced films, but every film needs a narrative thread that carries it along. Here they tried to do it with the music, but it wasn't nearly enough.
Summing up, look it up if you really are into the music or the visuals and have some patience, what I wouldn't reccomend it do to the bad work the film does story and character-wise. I understand why some people liked it and glossed over the negative aspects I mentioned, but I wasn't able to. It's a shame, though, that it turned out like this, since it could really have been a much greater film.