Lawbolisted Powerful

ShangLuda Admirable film.

BallWubba Wow! What a bizarre film! Unfortunately the few funny moments there were were quite overshadowed by it's completely weird and random vibe throughout.

Ariella Broughton It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

dinesenfiend The beautiful, Barry Lyndon-like sheen of Tous Les Matins du Monde is at odds with its sour characters and melodramatic plot. Despite an end that makes overtures to archetypes and to epic creation, watching Matins proves a tedious experience.Set in the late 1600s, Matins revolves around four characters. The leader of the pack is Monsieur de Saint Colombe, a gruff middle-aged widower with a grand total of two interests: music (he plays the viola) and the memory of his late wife. He lives on an estate in the country with two daughters whom he consistently neglects; the estate keeps up appearances without his supervision.The family gains renown for its musical abilities when his two daughters eventually join him in plucking at stringed instruments. There is, for a time, nothing but music and family and the green of the countryside. This Rousseauian idyll is poisoned when a strapping, blonde-haired young man—alas, a city urchin!— asks de Saint Colombe to teach him about music. The young man is more interested in revenge than music, in getting to where he needs to go than the hearts he has to break along the way.Writers Pascal Quignard and Alain Corneau (the film is directed by Corneau) thrust de Saint Colombe on viewers out of the apparent belief that a great artist must be cruel, oafish, unknown and unhappy. They make sure that two long-suffering women are present: de Saint Colombe's daughters accept his awfulness without humor or challenge. Of course, were his daughters to challenge de Saint Colombe, Quignard and Corneau would run the risk of developing something more complex than they're interested in making here.While the people get uglier, the countryside stays pretty, thanks to the film's gorgeous lighting and Yves Angelo's photography. The final scenes pull from the dark shadows and golden light of late Rembrandt, and from John Alcott's work on Barry Lyndon. The costumes are lovely, the estate seems appropriately large and cold, and several of the performances are played with conviction.There's memorable style here, but no substance to match it.

gradyharp '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

maleesh First things first, this is a film very much about music, so if you do not like "classical" music, then find something else. It is something like a short philosophy of music according to M. de St. Colombe and Marin Marais, two very different composers---how close the movie is to the "real" St. Colombe and Marias, confessedly, I do not know, but this is not a documentary, so it really does not matter. There is also a very beautiful exploration of love and its various manifestations in friendship, parenthood, and sexual relations. The movie is heavy, burdened by sadness and melancholy; but it is a beautiful film and worth viewing so long as you are prepared for its weight. Its tones are elegiac, autumnal, meditative, and inward, as is the haunting music given us by Jordi Savall and co. The acting, sets, and cinematography are all excellent (hence the 10 rating). If you want something light then this is not the film for you; if you are, however, in a mood for a film that mourns with dignity, then you have found the right one.

p_csaba A truly amazing movie with Gerard Depardieu at his best. He creates an atmosphere by a single look, rules the screen whenever he is on. Surprisingly, even his wash-out son, the poor Guillaume couldn't manage to do any harm to this throat-gripping tale. Nevertheless, the film is far less pleasure for the hearing impaired as the music is the real hot shot of this movie. It is simply unforgettable. All the Mornings of the World is not a mass movie (though it had an incredible success, 2 million people saw it in France alone). It is slow, action-free and cathartically sad with a very special classical kind of soundtrack for the movie connoisseurs.