Soon after May 1968, Mauricio Kagel, an Argentinian musician, launched himself into film making. "Ludwig van" is the first of his productions.
The black and white film is intentionally dislodged, disturbed, disrespectful, even aggressive.
Here, there is no story. The film is constituted of a series of scenes, without connection between them. At the start we are in the presence of a half deaf Beethoven, represented in a subjective way, so that the spectator becomes the composer. Thus we tour the places where Beethoven lived: his desk, covered entirely with pieces of music; his cellar, storeroom filled with bottles of wine; his hay loft, where he stacks the scores of composers of the XIX and XX centuries; his bathroom, in which the bathtub is full of busts of... Beethoven, which we take one after the other.
The tone is striking: not a documentary reportage, not a biographical film or anecdote, Kagel provokes us, takes us by surprise, irritates us.
Then, we are present, in the confusion, at a laughable televised dispute over Beethoven and his music; an evaluation of his physical capacities, morales and phsychies of the music of Beethoven on the performers (this part is one of the more humorous); in one interview, in a field, of a descendant of Beethoven...
There are many other scenes, which cover subjects such as the hearing of the composer, the analysis of his skull, the course of musical television, the analysis of the texts of Beethoven (notably his conversation notebooks), etc.
The film ends at the zoo, by the scenes presenting the animals in the most stupid attitudes possible, indeed even scatological.
The music of Beethoven is reviewed with talent by Mauricio Kagel.
