A Life of Its Own

This week’s lecture looked at how musical objects are used in films to create social meaning or to give additional depth to characters’ voices. I want to take this idea a step further and look at how musical instruments can become characters of their own, taking on connotations and narrative functions as well as providing an avenue through which other characters can express themselves. A perfect example of this is François Girard’s The Red Violin (1998). In this film, the instrument unites five separate narratives, carrying its owners’ dark secrets with it from century to century and continent to continent. Even the film's poster positions the instrument as a human character:

The violin’s personification begins almost immediately, when 17th century luthier Bussotti uses his dead wife’s blood in the violin’s varnish. The violin’s embodiment of loss and love continues as it passes through the hands of monks, an orphaned prodigy and gypsies, before English virtuoso Frederick Pope acquires it. Here, the instrument expresses Pope’s passion for Victoria Byrd – and also becomes the victim of his subsequent adultery, when an outraged Byrd shoots at it. We begin to get the sense the violin may be cursed, as it finds its way to China and then has to be hidden as Mao’s Cultural Revolution prohibits the ownership of such western instruments. When it finally comes up for auction in present-day Montreal, it has left a trail of destruction and suffering in its wake, and the film leaves us questioning what fate its new owner will suffer.

In The Red Violin, the instrument has a life of its own – bringing a completely new meaning to Stilwell’s term ‘medium of transference’.