The Lonely Heart

quite possibly one of the greatest films of ALL time.also the most under rated and misunderstood bios ever made. never has a film so flawlessly combined music and image to create the telling of a mans life through his excessively romantic music combined with equally excessive visuals.its highly operatic in its telling and to some over the top. how anyone can say that after listening to the mans music is beyond me.in short this is without doubt my favorite film ever made.

Ken Russell's film of the life of Tchaikovsky and his lunatic wife is unabashedly opulent and more than a little wacky. A woefully miscast Richard Chamberlain plays the title role and he's awful...was one of the world's great composers really THIS vapid? Glenda Jackson as his unhinged wife is a lot better..in fact she's a lot more animated than usual. She's also a lot prettier than usual donning a full head of hair and looking quite foxy in costumes that leave little to the imagination. Russell's direction is also terrific...the scenes of Jackson in an insane asylum are among the best Russell's ever done. It's certainly much better and more cerebral than Russell's later LISZTOMANIA --- that may or may not have more to do with the classy screenplay by Melvyn Bragg, but no matter, THE MUSIC LOVERS is a must see for Russell aficionados.

This film is one of Ken Russell's best dramatic romps. He dashes through late 19th Century Russian history without a care to whether it is all in the correct place or not. But that doesn't matter. It's your typical Russell film: Overstated dramatic acting, madness, mental institutions, frilly frocks and women with low-cut dresses and big *. As this film recounts the life of 19th Century Russian composer Pyotr Tchaikovsky, Russell manages to capture a feeling this is essentially Russian. You could almost swear that the story was straight out of a Checkov play, it has that Russian warmth to it. Far more interesting than a long, drawn-out serious biography, The Music Lovers is fun and entertaining in a dramatic way, worth watching. However, keep to the encyclopaedia if you want a proper history of Tchaikovsky's life.

Watching a Ken Russell film is, if anything, an experience, and this was certainly was an emotional rollercoaster. Although it has less of the absurdist/surrealist touches that would come to characterize his later films, it still had a rhapsodic quality that deftly blended the music and visuals. While I can't claim to be overly familiar with Tchaikovsky's life, by now I'm used to Russell's approach in this area: taking the raw, biographical material and concocting something purely fantastical out of it. It's an approach that I quite like, something which moves beyond the mundane and quotidian details that characterize ordinary life and creates something magical and mythological, that lays bare the inner life of its characters. I also liked how the film played with blurring lines, revealing underlying connections between music and sexuality, ecstasy and insanity. This was certainly less insane of a movie than LISZTOMANIA, but just as dramatically thrilling. It is cinematic art.

Quite possibly one of the greatest films of ALL time. Also the most under rated and misunderstood bios ever made. Never has a film so flawlessly combined music and image to create the telling of a mans life through his excessively romantic music combined with equally excessive visuals. Its highly operatic in its telling and to some over the top. How anyone can say that after listening to the mans music is beyond me. In short this is without a doubt my favorite film ever made.

One of Richard Chamberlain's most memorable and fringe roles. Glenda Jackson is brilliant. The romance, passion, melodrama, and ultimate tragic fate of the main characters are all intensely portrayed with rich cinematography and the most lavish sets Russell ever used. The film carries that subtle yet omnipresent surreality which is a trademark of Russell's films, and which some find so annoying, and others so seductive and heightening of the experience. A truly wonderful but sad film.

"Music Lovers" has long been labored over as another of Ken Russell extravagant excess baggages. Seeing it again has made me realize that the film is rather brilliant--not in cinema style but in conception. From the very start it seems to capture the schizoid world of Tsaichovsky and the social milleau he was forced to grip with. The point of view shots and the subsequent dream sequences in the early portion of the film capture this in brilliant colors and sharp editing. As the musician falls into his double life the scnes build to the scarring climax. Performances are excellent. The film may not be totally accurate, but who cares?