Testimony - Tony Palmer's Story of Shostakovich / Ben Kingsley (1988)

Testimony is one of those comparatively rare events nowadays – a real piece of cinema. Tony Palmer’s prowess as an editor, his knack of juxtaposing image and music – something which has remained his forte since he first caused a stir back in the Sixties with Buddhist monks burning to The Beatles – has a field day in Testimony. Most importantly for a movie about a composer, there is always the feeling that Palmer understands the music. For a start he puts to rest the hoary old cliché that the private Shostakovich is only to be found in his chamber music – try listening to the Seventh, Eighth, Ninth and Fourteenth symphonies – but he also brings vividly alive musical details (like the composer’s use of unison scoring) in colour sequences showing the orchestra, as in the climax of the Fifth..... a truly remarkable film. Starring Ben Kingsley.

Warning: Shameful Transfer!!

Having watched a 1-hour version of this film several years ago on TV, I was elated at finding out the complete version was on DVD. So much for the good news. When I started watching it I thought something was wrong with my DVD player; unfortunately (or fortunately!) there was nothing wrong with the player... the quality of the transfer is just horrible, equal to a very worn out VHS tape. For the price this is going for, it's highway robbery. You've been warned. By the way, the film is excellent... the sequence at Babi Yar is ver poignant. Hopefully someday the film will get a decent remastering. 5 stars for the film; 0 stars for the DVD. Too bad. June 16, 2008

In the Eye of the Beholder

Tony Palmer appears to have made a documentary on just about every musician in the world, and generally gets high ratings. My first purchase was "England, My England -- The Story of Henry Purcell" (151 minutes). All I saw were actors walking around in old clothes with a few snippets of Purcell's music in the background. Unfortunately, I didn't learn from the experience: I bought the Shostakovich documentary!

"Testimony", supposedly based on Solomon Volkov's book about Shostakovich (which I read), is much in the same mode as the Purcell documentary: a lot of slow, dark shadows moving around groaning, mostly Ben Kingsley as Dmitri. The most interesting part of the production was some old newsreal footage from the Soviet Union. Although the packaging claims that the documentary contains "extracts" from 11 Shostakovich symphonies, a violin and a piano concerto. two string quartets, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, Jazz Suite 1 & 2, and Michelangelo Sonnets, you couldn't prove it by me. In 2 1/2 hrs (151") one COULD include entire movements of several pieces, but it didn't happen that way.

If you are a Palmer fan, then nothing I say here will discourage you. But if you expect to hear music in a very long documentary about music, then, having now been stung twice by this series, I feel I have earned the right to suggest that you might spend your money more profitably on a symphony (or 2?) by Mahler or Bruckner.

November 21, 2007

Shostakovich via cinema verite merged with music video

Anyone expecting a literal retelling of tales from Solomon Volkov's book "Testimony" is going to be disappointed and bewildered by Tony Palmer's cinematic account, for this is more a 150-minute metaphor and music video than narrative of the life and times of DSCH.

Make no mistake, this is a stunning piece of cinema verite, an art form described in one place as, "A form of entertainment that enacts a story by sound and a sequence of images giving the illusion of continuous movement." The scenes in this film comprise all the important moments of Shostakovich's life -- his student years in academy with Glazunov, the success of his student Symphony No. 1, his fear after Stalin's denigration of Lady McBeth of Minsk, his friendships with Tukaschevsky and Meyerhold, the make-good symphony No. 5, "an artist's reply to just criticism", a funny scene about the wartime "Leningrad" symphony and his famous firehat episode that got him on the cover of Time, his 1948 denunciation by Zhdanov at the musical congress, his home life with Nina, Galya and Maxim and the adults ongoing paranoia that a nighttime knock on the door would take him away at any moment.

Yes, the sequences are all there. But to say they are comprehenisve or fleshed out, as they are in the book, would be a mistake. Like Ben Kingsley's portrayal of the composer, these scenes are riveting but superfluous; they tend to last only a few minutes and are often accompanied or followed by bleeding chunks of Shostakovich's music, which is really the star of the program. At other times, newsreel footage of the era is interspersed to accompany the music, much as it did in the oustanding 2005 DVD "Shostakovich Against Stalin: The War Symphonies" (ASIN: B000BLBZM0) with grainy black and white photography adding artistry and affect.

So it's better to think of this as a work of cinematic art than a movie. It's better yet to consider it a music video accompanied by real and acted scenes of Shostakovich's epoch. While Kingsley always comes off well as the composer and the other actors variably fulfill their requirements, I did not find the portrayal of Josef Stalin meaningful or dimensional. The best scene about him was one where Shostakovich was laughing aloud at home the day he died, joyful that he outlived the dictator as he considered attending Prokofiev's funeral instead of Stalin's since the two died on the same day in 1953.

Still, taken in its totality, this English production is a compelling document that lies somewhere between the documentary value of "Shostakovich Against Stalin" and the value of a fully-fledged Hollywood biopic of the composer such as "Amadeus". Anyone that has not read the book on which the film is loosely based, or anyone not familiar with the background of the Soviet composer, will be almost completely lost most of the time because there is never 5 minutes of uninterrupted narrative on which to understand the storyline. In fact, the concept of storyline is often unapparent.

Shostakovich's music is generously presented and well-produced throughout the film. The London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Rudolf Barshai give bleeding chunks of Symphonies 1, 4, 7-9 and 11-14 with selections from the latter choral symphonies ably sung by John Shirley-Quirk and Felicity Palmer. Conductors Kyril Kondrashin and Karel Ancerl lead sections of the Symphonies 5 and 10, respectively, while luminaries and lesser known artists perform sections from Lady McBeth from Minsk, the Michaelangelo sonnets, Jazz Suites 1 and 2, Violin Concerto No. 1, Piano Concerto No. 2 and the String Quartets 8 and 10, one of which closes the program over credits. There is a selection from Mozart in there, too.

By far, the most unusual thing about this film is its timing. The box and Amazon promotion both suggest the film runs 1 hour 51 minutes. However, my DVD player said this film ran 2:26 with 4 minutes of credits. Never have I gotten a DVD with such a difference between the posted and actual timing, which I confirmed by looking at the clock in my house. August 21, 2007

Really awful

I wanted to like this film but it is long and boring. Ben Kingsley did a nice job with what he had but this movie is ill-conceived. There are lots of shots of machinery, train engines and molten steel set to Shostakovich's music. The integration of black and white with color did not help. This is only for the really hard-core Shostakovich fan and then don't expect many insights. I want my 2 1/2 hours back ! June 4, 2007

Great Film of a Great Composer, but....

... the video transfer appears to be absolutely awful. It looks like it might have been transferred from video table instead of from the original negative or even a good print. In order to squeeze a movie that is more than two hours long onto a single-sided DVD they must have used lower quality compression. Rather expensive for a DVD of such low quality.

If you haven't seen the movie before and you love Shostakovich, buy a used copy, save your money, and enjoy. You won't be disappointed. October 29, 2006

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