Christine Jezior’s documentary The Haendel Variations is a very unusual portrait of the musician, teacher, and humanist Ida Haendel. Among musicians, she is considered a legend, and yet, instead of focusing on the extraordinary career of the star violinist, the German-Polish filmmaker concentrates on the here and now of the 91-year-old artist. Her film is based entirely on material she shot between 2009 and 2017 at the end of Haendel’s career, a stage of her life marked by loss of dexterity and occasional loneliness. It is precisely in this fragile period where Jezior discovers the essence of the musician’s exceptional work. For Haendel, music and life are inseparable: when her fingers fail, she starts singing, when she doesn’t sing, she still lives with unflinching virtuosity. It is therefore wonderfully fitting that Jezior has structured her film according to musical movements. This well thought-through structure creates a stage which Ida Haendel enters with the grandeur and ease of a great performer.
(
abe, DokuArts)