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Testimony [1988]. 

Ben Kingsley plays Dmitri Shostakovich. Based on the book Testimony: The
Memoirs of Dmitri Shostakovich by Solomon Volkov.

Aspects of Testimony border on Sybil Bedford's exercise in fictional
autobiography [Jigsaw]. This is particularly evident in Shostakovich's
self-styled portrayal of Stalin and his interlocking destinies. In near epic
fashion, Shostakovich and Stalin's relationship becomes an apotheosis of the
struggle between good and evil in this film. A dramatization of
will-to-power vs will to truth-in-art. At least according to Shostakovich
and Volkov. 

Likewise, Prokofiev functions as an alter-ego. As the main rival to
Shostakovich, Prokofiev is the composer whose genius is subsumed by the
demands of Stalin and the Soviet State. More publicly acclaimed, and
compositionally accessible, Prokofiev is the artist who has gone the way of
the low-road, to S's high-road. The manner in which the film adopts
fictional forms for historical figures, reminds me of the fully fictional
Salieri to Peter Shaffer's Mozart in Amadeus [1984].

The intersections of autobiography and biography is also played out in the
father/son, hero/adulator, mentor/critical protogé roles of Shostakovich and
Volkov. The later may be in the service of S as the accomodating recorder of
the *great* composer's memoirs. Nonetheless he frames the story as
interlocutor and editor. In some senses the story is told through Volkov's
lenses.

It is an uneven film perhaps. But even years later this film still
resonates, mostly as time-compressed sound-images, character-images, and
epiphanal moments such as Shostakovich on the roofs of Leningrad during the
invasion of Moscow.

Susanna 






on 4/25/03 8:36 PM, Ross Macleay at [log in to unmask] wrote:

> Is there such a thing as a good biopic? Can someone name one?
> 
> Maybe RAGING BULL (but is it a biopic)?
> 
> I only recently saw FRIDA. Besides being occasionally quite moved I was
> troubled all the way through.
> It had the paintings as a source of images (but maybe this was its problem,
> not a blessing)
> It had an artist-autobiographer par excellence as subject (but maybe this
> was its problem)
> It had known historical personages and their signatures (eg Trotsky's
> glasses, Frida's eyebrows) (bmtwip)
> It had the life of a heroine - and a hero (bmtwip). Am I unusual in not
> being much inspired and a bit suspicious of this role model thing.
> And then in between all this known stuff, like all biopics, the everyday
> drama, the little unknown details, the dialogues over breakfast had to be
> interpolated. And like all biopic and historical romance interpolation this,
> the ficitivity of the biopic, is a melange of soap, romance, ideology,
> artificial colour and flavour, packing, decoration. In the turbid mix of
> fiction and fact each contaminates the other. I doubt whether there is any
> good artwork that can get away with the almost unavoidable violation of
> truth and honesty. (But it is a challenge, and surely some biopic has
> succeeded.) One solution is to go for complete fiction (CITIZEN KANE)
> another is to go for documentary biography.
> And it had the stations of the life - that I, like most of the audience,
> sort of half knew (bmtwip). Aristotle said a life does not make a good
> story - all those episodic stations that have to be included one after the
> other, lacking rhyme or reason, merely inviting or expecting recognition and
> reverence. The great problem is plot.
> 
> Maybe it is just me.
> 
> Ross