The Song of Names

London Film Festival review #2

1986: Martin (Tim Roth) is a classical music impresario attempting to track down his adopted brother, Dovidl (Clive Owen), a Jewish refugee and violin prodigy who disappeared 35 years previously.

Introducing this film at the London Film Festival, the producer revealed that his mother had given him a copy of the novel by Norman Lebrecht, and he had loved it so much that he became determined to film it. As the story is set amid the world of classical music, director François Girard must have seemed an obvious choice, having made mostly music-related films such as Thirty Two Short Films about Glenn Gould and The Red Violin. Given that the screenplay is by Jeffrey Caine, who successfully adapted John Le Carré’s The Constant Gardener some years ago, this is clearly a film produced by people who know what they’re doing. However, it suffers from a number of shortcomings.

The story takes place in several time periods, meaning that there are three actors playing Martin at different ages, and another three playing Dovidl. This would not necessarily be a problem were it not for the fact that it’s difficult to see how the posh young Martins played by Misha Handley and Gerran Howell could possibly have grown up to be Tim Roth, who doesn’t seem posh at all. There’s a similar lack of consistency in the three portrayals of Dovidl, although Luke Doyle (who plays him as a child [see pic]) rather steals this movie with his amusing arrogance.

There are also issues with the story, and the contrived plot begins to creak more and more noticeably as the film proceeds. Once the central mystery has been solved, the film really has nowhere else to go, and it winds up with a couple of thuddingly predictable ‘twists’ before finally sputtering out.

Roth and Owen are fine considering their questionable casting, while the other performances to note are the musical ones. The virtuoso violin parts are all played by Ray Chen, while the most affecting scene in the picture is when a rabbi sings from the titular song. This sequence is genuinely moving, mainly because the singing is extraordinary.*

Overall, this middle class musical mystery is well-made and fairly absorbing but ultimately collapses like a house of cards.

*Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to confirm the name of the singer.