琴韵动我心

《琴韵动我心》是一部令人难以忘怀的电影。故事讲述了一位居住在美国的俄裔钢琴老师，索沙兹卡夫人，她对教学的热情和认真程度令人敬佩。她相信自己的职责不仅仅是教人弹琴，更是教导学生品味人生。在故事中，索沙兹卡夫人遇到了一位名叫曼尼克的十五岁印度少年。她对曼尼克的要求非常严格，要求他绝对服从。然而，曼尼克的人生态度却因索沙兹卡夫人以前的一名女学生珍妮的男朋友的游说而发生了改变。这位男生一直在劝说曼尼克出来演奏赚钱。他认为曼尼克的才华应该被更多人所知，并且可以通过音乐来改变他的生活。这个提议引起了曼尼克内心的冲突。他开始思考自己对音乐的态度，以及音乐对他人生的意义。电影通过曼尼克的成长过程展现了音乐的力量和影响。曼尼克逐渐明白，音乐不仅仅是一种艺术形式，更是一种表达情感和传递信息的工具。他开始意识到自己对音乐的热爱，并决定追随自己的梦想。《琴韵动我心》不仅仅是一部关于音乐的电影，更是一部关于成长和自我发现的电影。它通过故事中的人物和情节，向观众传递了许多深刻的思考和启示。这部电影让人们重新审视自己对音乐和生活的态度，引发了对内心真实渴望的思考。它让观众感受到了音乐的魅力，同时也给予了他们勇气去追寻自己的梦想。

Madame Sousatzka (MacLaine), an Russian-American immigrant in London, a pianist-manqué-turned-piano-teacher, is a bitter middle-aged spinster, lives alone in her cluttered apartment with pictures of many a prodigious musician, some of them are her students.

Her harridan temperament doesn’t stop her from getting promising students, simply because she is a goddam competent teacher, her latest protégé is a 16-year-old Manek (Chowdhry) of Bengali extraction, whom she deems to have great potentiality, but high hopes breeds complications, not least the conflict between Manek’s overprotective single mother Sushila (a perversely feisty Azmi radiates animation and street-smart) and Sousatzka who has been building an increasingly close bond with the young boy.

As she proudly professes, Sousatzka not only teaches musicology, but life itself as well, and she is not malleable of her disciplines, particularly regarding when Manek will be ready for public performance, problems arise when Manek is approached by producer Ronnie (Lawson) to arrange his debut performance, and a rival music teacher Leo (Rietty) may have his own design on snatching Manek under his tutelage. But, what director John Schlesinger flintily homes in on is that their extant teacher-student rapport is already insalubrious, it is the overflowing maternal affection Manek receiving on a daily basis from two “mothers” that drives him away from Sousatzka, the sad truth is that it is a lesson the latter fails to learn from, and Manek is simply not the first.

Be that as it may, Ms. MacLaine vigorously injects a spit-fire assurance into her character, she takes no prisoners in magnifying a lonely woman’s hardened obstinacy. Occasionally smitten with the glimpses of a dreadful past that she thinks is the bane of her failure, she is equally eloquent in quieter, even wordless scenes. Sousatzka is anything but a warm person, habitually leery of anyone around her, as if the whole world is scheming against her, and never for one second, she lowers down her guard in front of other people. However, we do feel for her in the end, skulked by a dashed dream and an unfulfilled life, it is more than understandable that she pours all her energy to nurture those unpolished gems and sometimes, overreaches herself for her role in their lives, and who can be the wiser?

On a lesser note, MADAME SOUSATZKA genuinely finds a surrogate family in the residents of the shambly building where Sousatzka resides, Dame Peggy Ashcroft’s last screen role is the kind-hearted Lady Emily and Twiggy as Jenny, a talentless wannabe-singer, is problematically served as Manek’s age-inappropriate crush for her outward allure only.

As a protean wire-puller, Schlesinger stages a series of almost mind-bending sequences with frenzy in Sousatzka’s studio whenever she harangues Manek or lays into various interruptions, and during the final concert, a visceral whirlpool of suspense and elation is remarkably palpable along with all the simulated musical virtuosity and positively, MADAME SOUSATZKA stands on its own as the last great picture made by Schlesinger in his fairly extraordinary career.

referential entries: Schlesinger’s MARATHON MAN (1976, 7.3/10); Damien Chazelle’s WHIPLASH (2014, 8.7/10).