Review – The Red Violin

Samuel L. Jackson stars in this busy little movie that follows a violin made by a master through a handful of owners. The intent here appears to be to create an anthology of vaguely depressing short subjects intertwined around basic human themes such as love, genius, lust and loss. That may sound a little weak, but the concepts around which the drama is built were actually fairly solid. This started out with the potential to be a good movie. However, the international crew of film-makers appears to be trying to pack too many elements into one picture. In particular, the tarot theme of one of the two bracketing stories struck me as unnecessary. I also didn’t care for the subtitling scheme. I don’t like English subtitles over actors who are already speaking English, yet the movie’s propensity to break into Italian or some other language without notice made it necessary to keep them on constantly. And even when the subtitles were appropriate, they were sometimes grossly insufficient. My particular favorite was the point during the Chinese vignette when one of the subtitles said nothing more than “(speaking Chinese).” No kidding. Overall the movie’s heart was in the right place, but it fell a little short in the execution department. Mildly amusing