Wash me????

there is no point. this is a terrible movie. heavy-handed and absurd. don't look for something that isn't there.

The whole movie is insulting to both Beethoven, and the viewers.

I initially had a similar reaction as other posters (a 19th century man asserting himself on his subservient 17th century woman servant - corrected century), but it didn't make sense.

Given his dialog up to it, my thought is that he appreciated her so much as a muse ("you're the key to my release"), that he wanted to be inmersed in her (being covered in grace). Putting the sexual harrassment aside, short of having sex, having her bath him seems the closest he could get to her (physically), before they come closer as musicians. Then she goes to write her own music, and he goes on to confront her fiance (actually releasing her from a subservient role, since she didn't like the bridge either), to write Grosse Fugue, and build bridges to connect men souls, and to the future.

As for the command vs request tone. For a genius, a "force of nature", the line between a request and a command is probably blurry.

I think it's an incredibly intimate scene. Washing someone - like Mary Magdeline washing Jesus' feet is an act of love. Maybe one that can't be expressed in any other way. At that point they had an emotional relationship and no way of expression and he knew it, she did it because she realized it and acknowledged it.

I think in some sense it was the closest thing to understanding and companionship the two characters could have. I think it was poorly executed but the idea is that Beethoven, who routinely just douses himself with water, yields to Anna, who has proclaimed him to be a brute. He wants to please her, as she does him. The washing scene is a compromise of sorts. It also serves as the only source of intimacy between the two and in a sense, aside from the music, represents him not only bearing his soul to her, but also his body. I think it could have been handled a little better, but the meaning is there.

"What was the point of that scene???"

Yikes, am I the only one who saw that as sensual? The longing of a lonely but brilliant musical genius who wants to be physically touched by someone who cares about him AND music?

And WHY did she do it? Read the above again. Obviously she cared about him more than she cared about the bridge-builder boyfriend.

Can't believe that is so HARD to fathom.

It is pure sex.

Oscar from Rosario City
Argentina

Hallo,

there is just one reasonable explanation for this scene: From now on the neighbour living in the flat under Beethoven's flat will not get drenched any more.


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