DN:FILM Moonlight Sonata
With a thrilling shock of Beethovenian hair and a cherubically expressive face (Raphael would love this head), steely tween Jonas Brodsky is determined to do the seemingly impossible: Master the daunting first movement of Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata,” that masterpiece of brooding piano pulchritude. The hitch: He will do it while possessing another, less fortunate trait of the great composer—deafness.
In MOONLIGHT SONATA: DEAFNESS IN THREE MOVEMENTS, director Irene Taylor Brodsky trains her camera on her son’s development from a healthy infant who swiftly loses his hearing—Brodsky’s parents are deaf (“It’s a hand-me-down,” says the filmmaker, who can hear)—and undergoes cochlear-implant surgery as a toddler. The surgery is miraculous, and by 11, when the film fully engages with Jonas, he has adjusted to a world of sound. But that doesn’t mean licking Beethoven’s 1801 composition will be easy. Sporting elaborate chunky hearing aids, Jonas is drawn to the living room piano, and as a fledgling piano student he announces he wants to learn his beloved “Moonlight Sonata.” His teacher declares the piece too difficult. Pshaw, says Jonas, who goes online and retrieves the sheet music for himself. The teacher, a persnickety, patient woman, relents and agrees that Jonas can learn it for a recital in seven months (the film’s ineluctable climax). Sprinkled with scenes of Jonas and his deaf grandparents—the boy and the couple experience deafness in remarkably different ways—Jonas’ piano lessons are grueling and fascinating spectacles of a bright, ornery kid attempting the implausible while growing up before our eyes. Defeat hovers closely. “Why should I bother?” he cries, hugging a pillow. “I hate this piece, I hate it!”
Taylor Brodsky tries to shoehorn the narrative of the rather routine relationship between Jonas and his grandfather into the plenty-engaging story of her beguiling star, which proves an awkward way to justify the film’s artificial “three movement” structure. Still, a gentle beauty and pathos suffuse the film, including some moving bits about grandpa. And if it isn’t a definitive meditation on deafness and creativity, it is an entrancing glimpse at an individual’s struggle with—and triumph over—disability.
In Select Theaters September 13th