Eventually the picture goes black in this film portrait. Has cameraman Jürgen Carle collapsed? “You have to drink a lot,” Anne-Sophie Mutter was just heard to say with concern. She had previously given her dachshund Bonnie water from a blue thermos bottle to sip on. One gets the impression that the Munich star violinist and her dog are always a little too fast, too fit, so that director Sigrid Faltin and her film team have to pant after the duo.
But that’s exactly what makes this documentary so charming, which very aptly bears the title “Vivace” (alive) and is now coming to the cinemas. Anne-Sophie Mutter, who is absolutely free from giddiness in the high passages on the edge of the handle on her two Stradivari violins, storms ahead with the resting heart rate of a competitive athlete and chatting without breathlessness on this high-altitude hike in the Kitzbühel Alps, which the film so something like a frame there. Nothing escapes the musician and she interrupts herself when she thinks about climate activist Greta Thunberg to draw attention to an Admiral butterfly fluttering by.
A butterfly also plays a touching role elsewhere in this portrait, for which Sigrid Faltin was able to capture the restless artist after many persistent attempts and countless emails. After all, almost eight years have passed since we first met in early summer 2015 in Freiburg until the theatrical release of this SWR production. But at some point Faltin Anne-Sophie Mutter – the declared dog lover will certainly forgive the picture – threw down a stick that she just had to grab. For the documentary, they want to give her people to talk to that she can choose for herself. “Roger Federer!”, returned mother, who worships the Swiss tennis god so ardently, that she once even put a concert in Melbourne around the time of the Australian Open final. It’s just stupid that Federer was eliminated in the semifinals.
One of the greatest moments in the film is when the mother travels to Zurich with her son Richard to meet the idol, and the tennis pro and the virtuoso discover a lot in common. It’s about ambition, perfection, self-doubt, fronthand and bowhand. And about the flow, like at the dramatic Wimbledon final in 2009, when mother cheered Federer’s victory so loudly that the friends at home in front of the TV thought they could hear her out of the crowd of screamers.
Always on the move, even when sitting: Anne-Sophie Mutter with John Williams, whose film music for “Star Wars” she heard for the first time in 1978 as a girl in the Black Forest. Decades later he composed a violin concerto for the star violinist. And the concert of the two on Munich’s Königsplatz in September 2019: extraterrestrial anyway!
(Photo: Prashant Gupta / Deutsche Grammophon)
“If you want to get to know an artist, you have to see him on stage,” the violinist warned the director at the start of the hike along the Höhenweg. But both of them probably already know that mother – despite all the control over the private sphere – will reveal a lot about herself. And not just in conversation with Federer, in meetings with the composers Jörg Widmann and John Williams, or in a chat in New York with the magician Steve Cohen, who eats a one-dollar bill in front of her.
The film changes locations almost as quickly as Mutter could play Niccolò Paganini’s Caprice No. 24 in A minor. Sigrid Faltin was able to draw on a lot of film material, because the life of this “child prodigy” was illuminated by the media early on: home stories and interviews from the seventies and eighties, the camera at rehearsals and concerts under her sponsor Herbert von Karajan, at her wedding with the Munich business lawyer Detlef Wunderlich in Kitzbühel. Then the early death of her husband, which she explains to her two children with the image of the caterpillar that turns into a butterfly. Just a few weeks later, a peacock sitting on the stage at the Berlin Konzerthaus.
When is the moment to stop? Anne-Sophie Mutter has thoughtful conversations with conductor Daniel Barenboim.
(Photo: Juergen Carle)
In conversation with conductor Daniel Barenboim, who was also once a child prodigy of classical music, it is very thoughtful about quitting at the right time. But hopefully Anne-Sophie Mutter, this lively woman with the Baden accent and the loud laugh, is still a long way from that. The director wants to know from her whether she has insured her virtuoso hands. Mother says no with amusement: “Why? I prefer to fall on my butt and stretch my violin in the air.”
Anne-Sophie Mutter – Vivace, documentary film by Sigrid Faltin, special screening in the presence of Mutter and Faltin, Wed., March 29, 7 p.m., Filmtheater Sendlinger Tor, further screenings from Tue., March 28, to Wed., March 5 April, in many cinemas in Bavaria, including Munich, Augsburg, Nuremberg, Regensburg, Information at filmwelt distribution.de
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