TIMBRE

A Brief Commentary of this month’s two film selections,

“The Artist’s Wife” and “Louis”
by John Bennison, Mountain Shadow Director

“Why do we paint?” the character Richard Smythgson asks in Tom Dolby’s new film ‘The Artist’s Wife.’ He answers his rhetorical question, “We paint because we have no choice.”

First, two thoughts: Expressed in many different ways, there is a creative impulse that drives the artist to do what they do. It can even become a compulsion.

Second, in my rudimentary understanding of musical composition, timbre denotes the tone that colors a piece of music. So-called ‘word painting’ is a musical technique that is meant to reflect or convey the message of what the composition is expressing. In one sense, it is not unlike the artist’s effort and intention when they pick up a brush.

Like a conductor’s baton, they can apply paint to canvas in order to say, without words, what that creative process is trying to visually express. Therefore, there is a common thread that is woven into any work of art. Timbre is the emotive consequence of such a process.

So, for Mountain Shadow’s selection this month, we chose and offered our audiences two new film releases. One is a contemporary tale of two fictional characters, whose life stories authentically reflect some very common, gripping issues and challenges for the aging couple.

The other film is a bio-pic that enlists the filmmaker’s imagination to fill in those spaces left open by missing historical facts. Everyone knows something about the famous composer, Ludwig van Beethoven, as a musi- cal genius who lived a tumultuous life. Film director, Niki Stein, recreates and animates his character with a lush, costumed, visual travelogue of historical places, used as backdrops.

The two films reflect some universal human themes. There’s the story of unrequited love on the one hand, and the maturation of a couple’s loving relationship on the other. There’s the supportive spouse, living in the shadows of her husband, with her own repressed self-actualization. There’s the creeping consequences of aging and the encumbrances that come with it; be it deafness for Louis, or dementia for Richard, or something else.

There’s always something else. As such, it is the filmmaker’s task to show us how their characters deal with it, or don’t. And, with any fine film, it’s always an artful and visionary tale. - jb