安娜·玛格达丽娜·巴赫的编年史

The feature debut from the rarefied French filmmaking duo Straub-Huillet, THE CHRONICLE OF ANNA MAGDALENA BACH forever changes the syntax and modality of music biography, structurally unfolds its chronological narrative pursuant to the excerpts of a fictional diary recounted by Johann Sebastian Bach’s second wife Anna Magdalena (Lang), with musicians precisely reprise Bach’s oeuvre dressed in period costumes, often in the locations where these works are premiered.

Each and every music piece is observed with mostly, a static, single take that framed with a particularly deliberated angle that often overlooks its subject, illustrious musicians - conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt, harpsichordist Gustav Leonhardt and Austrian music ensemble Concentus Musicus Wien, among others, offering full rendering of Bach’s baroque éclat, whether it is from a single harpsichord, or an ensemble with chorus. For any classical music connoisseur and Bach votary, the film is an ascetic paean paying deferential homage to one of the most accomplished musicians of all time, and for those less familiar with Bach’s works, it constitutes an edifyingly melodious 94-minute introduction to wide our horizons and nourish our sensoria, however unrelieved its modus operandi is.

Visually, it is all to obvious to discern the different wigs worn by musician and singers (seemingly from different eras), and several pillow shots of natural landscape or cloudscape conforms to a strict Lutheran aesthetic, which is quintessential in Bach’s intellects, and Straub-Huillet’s esoteric air, impassive asperity and stylized restraint soon would be inherited and disseminated by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, prominently in EFFI BRIEST (1974), another black-and-white period drama that makes for a perfect companion piece.

referential entries: Dietrich Brüggemann’s STATIONS OF THE CROSS (2014, 4.2/10); Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s EFFI BRIEST (1974, 7.7/10).