I was intrigued by this film. The IMDb page shows no average rating, no user reviews, no critic reviews. Same with the Amazon Prime page. A Google search yields only one short review So, out of curiosity I gave it a view.
The subject: In the summer of 1792 composer Franz Joseph Haydn, during the first of his two sojourns in England visited astronomer Friedrich Wilhelm Herschel in the town of Slough, a few miles from London. Together with his sister Caroline and his brother Alexander, Herschel had assembled there a gigantic refracting telescope, by far the largest in the world at the time. Haydn was a conservative Catholic and the movie imagines Herschel's cosmic experiences colliding with the composer's traditional worldview. Haydn later claimed that his experience at Slough had helped him to compose his oratorio The Creation in 1798.
I liked the script, but not the way it was put on screen. The director tells the tale using tricks such as split/fragmented screen, unnatural colors, blurry images, characters artificially lighted, dark or lighted blobs that move around the screen. Then there are special effects, mostly stellar/galactic views that probably aim to duplicate what Herschel (and Haydn) saw through the telescope. The effects are clumsy, at the level of a low budget B-movie or a home movie. True, in 1986 digital magic had not yet invaded the screen, but many films of the time do effects better using conventional means. All in all, the movie doesn't make it.
The subject: In the summer of 1792 composer Franz Joseph Haydn, during the first of his two sojourns in England visited astronomer Friedrich Wilhelm Herschel in the town of Slough, a few miles from London. Together with his sister Caroline and his brother Alexander, Herschel had assembled there a gigantic refracting telescope, by far the largest in the world at the time. Haydn was a conservative Catholic and the movie imagines Herschel's cosmic experiences colliding with the composer's traditional worldview. Haydn later claimed that his experience at Slough had helped him to compose his oratorio The Creation in 1798.
I liked the script, but not the way it was put on screen. The director tells the tale using tricks such as split/fragmented screen, unnatural colors, blurry images, characters artificially lighted, dark or lighted blobs that move around the screen. Then there are special effects, mostly stellar/galactic views that probably aim to duplicate what Herschel (and Haydn) saw through the telescope. The effects are clumsy, at the level of a low budget B-movie or a home movie. True, in 1986 digital magic had not yet invaded the screen, but many films of the time do effects better using conventional means. All in all, the movie doesn't make it.