Movie Reviews : Ponderous ‘Testimony’ to Struggles of Shostakovich

There’s more to admire than to enjoy in British film maker Tony Palmer’s “Testimony” (Laemmle’s Music Hall), an oblique and utterly demanding two-hour, 37-minute contemplation of the life of Soviet composer Dmitri Shostakovich, played with repressed passion by Ben Kingsley.

In addition to Kingsley’s performance and to the selections from the composer’s moody, often turbulent music (performed by the London Philharmonic under Rudolf Barshai), which serve as the film’s score, “Testimony’s” other major plus is its rich black-and-white images.

In contrast to Palmer’s nine-hour “Wagner,” which had the muted colors of the traditional period picture, “Testimony” recalls the films of Orson Welles in its dark, shadowy fantasy sequences, its vast perspectives and in the ingenious pastiche of its production design. One could even go so far as to say that Palmer’s view of Stalin as a remote and isolated figure brings to mind Welles’ initial evocation of Charles Foster Kane. But Palmer keeps us at a distance as determinedly as Welles attempted to draw us into the lives of his people.

In essence Palmer presents Shostakovich’s life--it spanned 1906 to 1975--and times in a series of bleak tableaux, in which the composer’s increasing struggle to square away his creative impulses with the treacherous and fluctuating Stalinist line culminate in his humble 1948 acceptance of cultural commissar Andrei Zhdanov’s condemnation of his music as “anti-democratic.” His ignominy was completed the next year when, as a “reward” for toeing the line, he was sent to New York to attend an international congress of musicians, where he, in turn, condemned the emigre Stravinksy for indulging in “form for form’s sake.”

Palmer expresses deep compassion for Shostakovich and his plight, for his ability to survive cycles of purges and for his never giving up his life’s work no matter how grim the circumstances.

Yet the film never comes alive except in Shostakovich’s two public humiliations, and even then we’re not quite sure of the composer’s attitude toward his statements at the time he made them . Are his words those of an artist determined to keep on working no matter what the price exacted? Or are they those of a good Communist who believes sincerely that he and his fellow composers should be doing a better job of serving the people? Or are they somehow both?

It’s one thing for Palmer and his co-writer David Rudkin, drawing upon Shostakovich’s memoirs as related to his confidant Solomon Volkov, not to dare to judge Shostakovich and another not to make it sufficiently clear as to whether we are meant to try to answer these questions for ourselves. (In any event, the film opens with Shostakovich’s imagined bitter and caustic observations as his corpse lies in state.)

For Kingsley, playing Ghandi must have been a piece of cake in comparison to portraying a Shostakovich restricted largely to voice-over narrations, yet he manages to convey the anguish of the artist forced to endure long sieges of oppression.

Palmer’s rigorously indirect approach does suggest that the resilient Shostakovich was finally an enigma, but it cannot sustain a film (Times-rated Mature) of such a very long running time without it seeming wearying and ponderous.