Movie Review - "The Concert" - A 6 out of 10 on the JWorld Scale

So I had mixed emotions about this movie.  I think this movie had and made a very important point.  However the plot was entirely implausible.  Now that would be okay, if it didn’t really try to have a plot….such as “Tree of Life”.  But this movie tries to have a plot.  It tries to play as a farce, but it is somewhat a tragic story of what suppression of art does to a person and a society.  I find farce and tragedy don’t always mix well especially if you want an inspirational ending….I wont even bother going over the plot, since it is ridiculous, but suffice it to say, I think a better ending would have been if he had been imagining the whole event from the Soviet Gulag. Ok, one point.  The story involves this ragtag group of musicians, who haven’t practiced together. playing a major symphony in a major venue. Dont ask how they got there.  So perhaps the message is that creativity finds a way to express itself. That may be true individually, but I think especially not with groups of people working together, like a symphony.  But perhaps I am looking at this too literally.

So having said all this, let me indicate the power of the movie. First, if you like the symphony, the ending of the movie has a wonderful symphony concert piece that makes the movie worth watching. In some ways, I think the movie is structured just for that very purpose.  The important point I think made in the movie is that creating art (in this case music) is transformational. It is not only transformational personally, but also societally.  And the stifling of art or the creative impulse, leads to self destruction, individually and societally.  When I think about the movie in a big picture way, I liked it a lot.  I just wish the story could have been told a little more creatively.