Tous les matins du monde

France -17th Century. Little known 17th Century viol player and composer Monsieur de Sainte Colombe regarded public performance as an act that corrupted the purity of music. Since his wife's death, he had lived in isolation with his two daughters Madeleine and Toinette –until a young musician, Marin Marais, convinces him to teach him viol. The ambitious pupil, aware of the unique quality of his master's music, will stop at nothing to get hold of the scores. The entire movie is played in rhythm with the viol -slow, melancholic, pure, beautiful. Action addicts should not even try to watch. But art lovers will have a delightful time.

'Tous les matins du monde' is more an experience than a movie. The brainchild of director Alain Corneau, writer Pascal Quignard, and musician Jordi Savall this film integrates the visual with the historicodramatic and the music that created the idea and bathes it in the most sensuously beautiful cinematography of a period (the 17th century) by Yves Angelo who is given the sets and design and costumes by Bernard Vézat and Corinne Jorry that create image after image of masterful still life. The total integration of the work of these masters is the plinth on which the actors offer the memory of two famous composers in French classical music history.

Saint-Colombe (Jean-Pierre Marielle) is a viol player and composer whose wife (Caroline Sihol) dies young leaving him to raise his two daughters young Madeleine (Violaine Lacroix) and young Toinette (Nadège Teron)whom he teaches his art of viol de gamba performance while sequestering himself and his girls in the countryside. Into their garden comes the young handsome son of a shoemaker, Marin Marais (Guillaume Depardieu, the son of Gerard Depardieu) who commits to learning the viol and eventually becomes a court musician only to fall in love with Saint-Colombe's elder daughter Madeleine (Anne Brochet) whom he eventually leaves for the glories of the court. As an adult (Gérard Depardieu pere) he realizes his error and returns to the Saint-Colombe sanctuary where he learns the true meaning of music as being something beyond words and thus something beyond human.

In the course of this quiet little film and in the dramatic lighting of the production design we hear the music of Couperin, Lully, as well as compositions by Marais and Saint-Colombe. Jordi Savall supplies the incidental music that binds these works and offers the viol playing together with a talented group of musicians. The story is small, the dialogue sparse (primarily Depardieu pere narrating his experience as Marais) and for the novice the film could be slow. But the incandescent beauty both visually and aurally make this film a work of art that has not been equaled since its appearance on the scene in 1991. It is a treasure. Highly recommended. Grady Harp

Normally I don't listen to classical music. I'm a fan of rock and pop music, which in my opinion is not that bizarre for a 27 year old man, but even though I don't know much about classical music, I can almost always enjoy it when it is used in a movie. The same here. In my opinion, the music may well be the best reason why I want to give this movie another try. I would even say that everybody should watch this movie at least twice. First you should go for the entire movie, so you know the story, and the second time you should close your eyes and turn up the volume in order to fully enjoy the fragile, but oh so beautiful music. I truly wish I knew more about classical music, in order to understand it better. Now I'm only an amateur who can judge in terms of 'I hated it' or 'I loved it', but who isn't able to say much more about it. Still, the movie has more to offer than just the music, the story and the acting are nice as well and that's something I know more to tell about.

This movie starts with an old Marin Marais who is listening to his orchestra that is rehearsing a composition by Monsieur de Sainte Colombe at the royal court in Versailles. But they don't play it the way it should be played and Marin Marais takes a viola da gamba to show them how it should be done. When he starts playing, all his memories about his time with the family de Sainte Colombe return and he starts telling everything: How he first met his master at the age of seventeen, how he fell in love with one of his daughters, how he became appointed to the court of Louis XIV, but never was seen as a real musician by his master... He also tells them that Monsieur de Sainte Colombe had a special way of working and that his music had a special reason of existence for the man. When his wife died and he wasn't home because of his work, the man got overwhelmed by grieve and a severe depression. From that moment on he dedicated his life to music and his two young daughters Madeleine and Toinette, avoiding the outside world and locking himself up in a small wooden shed. It was soon known what a good musician he was, even at the court of Louis XIV, where he was offered a job in the king's orchestra. But he refused because his music wasn't intended for people who didn't understand the real meaning of it: remembering his beloved wife who died too soon.

Despite the fact that in my opinion the Baroque period is probably the worst period in history when it comes to clothing and architecture - it's all much too pompous and over the top to my taste - I must say that it didn't bother me all that much in this movie. The main reason for that is because it wasn't constantly shown. Take for instance Monsieur de Sainte Colombe. Even though he lived in this time period, he didn't wear any of those costumes, but preferred to keep wearing his old and much soberer clothes. The same for his daughters, they never wear those extra large ball gowns, but have quite simple dresses. The only person that wore those clothes was the adult Marin Marais, and he only appears in the last part of the movie. But don't worry, that's about the only bad comment that I have about this movie. The acting and the story are certainly very good and make this movie worth watching. But as I said earlier in this review, nothing could be compared to the wonderful music.

In the end I can only say that everything that I saw, worked. It all looked good and I really don't understand why this movie isn't known by more voters on this website (only 971 at this moment). I believe that the fact that it hasn't been released on DVD yet, can be a reason for that 'problem', but don't let that be a reason not to watch it. When you get the chance to see it on VHS or on television, I certainly should give it a try. I really liked it and I give this movie a 7.5/10.

As a professional musician, there are two things that happen in films that are likely to make me quite angry. One is a general concern, and the other is a more elemental notion of the nature of music. This movie deals with both quite well.

The general concern deals with seeing somebody playing an instrument in a scene. It is very rare to see somebody in a film that really looks like they are playing the instrument they are holding. I will grant that it is unrealistic to expect a leading player who has devoted his/her training to the art of acting to be fully proficient on an instrument that a role may require, but more often than not, they are simply given the instrument without any sort of coaching on how the instrument should be held or where their hands should be when the instrument is making a certain sound. When this happens in a film, my ability to suspend disbelief goes right out the window never to return. This is not limited to lead players, however. Often a band that is supposed to be playing music in the background is made up of actors that have no conception of the operation of the arcane devices they are holding. To add insult to injury, the soundtrack seldom matches up to the instrumentation of the band. This movie does an admirable job at keeping things believable in this regard. The instruments are held correctly. The hands of the actors move as they should. With only a few exceptions, the instruments you hear are the ones that are on screen. Even in terms of historical ideas of ornamentation and execution, this movie has done its homework. It seems that most moviemakers regard music as trivial, and thus, they make little effort for accuracy where it is concerned. This movie, perhaps, works harder at it because of its subject matter, which leads me to part two of this diatribe.

What is music? That is the central idea of this film. There is also a story involving a master viol player and his young student who seduces and abandons his eldest daughter, but it is simply a frame for the central question. If you attempt this sort of thing, you are on dangerous ground as far as I am concerned. It is an attempt that isn't made very often. Movies like Amadeus and Farinelli, entertainment value notwithstanding, are more about the personalities involved, and music is the frame rather than the central question. Others, like the contemptible Mr. Holland's Opus, boil the answer down into some trivial concept like "Let the music play you." The answer is not that easy. Speech may not even be capable of expressing it. That is the struggle of this film. The young student is quite talented. His technique is immaculate. The master sees and admits this quite freely. He is even unconcerned that the young student is taking some of his ideas and using them in his own music for publication. He has nothing to teach him as far as technical matters go. His struggle lies in making him a musician instead of a glorified musical acrobat. In this framework, it would be easy to degenerate into the flaccid trivialities that Mr. Holland's Opus embraces, but this film does not do that. It even lines these idiotic platitudes up in order to shoot them down. (In a scene later in the film when the young man returns to the master's villa to hear him play before he dies, the master asks him, "Have you learned that music is not for kings?" "I have learned that music is for God." he replies. The master answers, "No. God can speak for himself.") It is a tangled and complex question. All of the simple generalizations are systematically lined up and exposed for the twaddle that they are.

So what is the answer? This film knows, but if you don't have some inkling of the answer, you may come away from this film with nothing more than an interesting story set in the music world of 17th century France. I have no idea if the historical details of the story are accurate, and it doesn't matter a jot if they are or not. This movie is about a difficult and complex idea that few have even attempted to tackle, let alone delineate it so beautifully. If the question can be answered for you, this film will do it.

It's as futile to lump 'Amadeus', 'My Brother Vincent', 'Immortal Beloved', and 'Tous les matins du monde' together as it is to indiscriminately group all films about crime or all sci-fi flicks. So with pretentious generalizations on "art films" out of the way, I'd like to point out that 'Tous les matins' masters the art of pacing in a film. The story unravels in a process like the blooming of a flower -- consistent, organic, and fascinating, albeit a shade slow.

Secondly, any renaissance/baroque music fans should see this film merely for its delightful scoring. Though early European music may be an acquired taste, "Tous les matins" presents the viola de gamba in all its expressive glory, foreshadowing works like Bach's well-known cello suites. If the quasi-deep attempts to address the definition of music bother you (as they occasionally bothered me), the complementation of the music and the film's pacing will captivate you nonetheless.

And offhand, fans of Julian Sands (especially in 'Impromptu')will get a kick out of comparing him to Guillaume Depardieu as the young Marin Marais...;)