Where In Search of Beethoven excels is in the details. For all the grandness of Beethoven's music, the documentary makes a real effort to present Beethoven the man as fairly and unsentimentally as possible.

| Original Score: 6/10 | Sep 23, 2020

Dispensing with all the cliched claptrap and generalisations that inevitably plague movies like this, Grabsky successfully reassesses and revitalises the imposing reputation of his subject.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 23, 2020

Illuminating bio of musical genius hits a few flat notes.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 31, 2010

Puts far more focus on a Wikipedia-shallow explanation of the composer's various compositions than on his tumultuous life.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Jun 2, 2010

[Grabsky] is documenting the life of Beethoven, he is illustrating the life with brilliant concert performers playing the music, but he is also having those same experts talking about what is in the music itself.

Full Review | Original Score: 8/10 | Apr 1, 2010

Tells the story of its subject in a clear, accessible, and gimmick-free manner while still preserving, or perhaps even cultivating, a core sense of wonder at the creative monuments he bequeathed to us all.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 7, 2010

An intriguing portrait of the man as a hopeless romantic, a smack-talking punk, a sickly individual tormented by his deafness and thoughts of suicide, and an "eternal optimist."

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 7, 2010

In Search of Beethoven trudges through the composer's life and works, pausing along the way for the usual smorgasbord of talking heads and performance clips. The results are shapeless, drab and mostly predictable.

| Original Score: 1/4 | Dec 17, 2009

With In Search of Beethoven, documentarian Phil Grabsky has created a splendid work that will be a revelation to the uninitiated and a joy to music lovers.

| Oct 30, 2009

Grabsky's appreciation of Ludwig van Beethoven follows the familiar contours, but it pays attention to the humanizing specifics that bring us closer to the subject.

| Oct 30, 2009

Grabsky does manage to convey how shockingly dramatic Beethoven's music seemed to the first people who heard it, and the musicians' sensitivity and articulation--both verbal and musical -- fire this chronicle of one man's extraordinary artistic journey.

| Oct 30, 2009

There are too many snippets of music, too many talking heads, too little to define that great arc of the composer's life and spiritual development. But no one who cares about the man and his music will miss it. For that I give credit to its subject.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 30, 2009

Beethoven's creative life, with all its achievements, cannot easily be reconciled with the image of a difficult, solitary figure, shadowed by depression. Grabsky, to his credit, doesn't try to make one life fit the other, but manages to illuminate both.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 30, 2009

As good as the film is, Beethoven remains mysterious. He refuses to roll over, so to speak.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Oct 30, 2009

Despite its excessive length, this reverential doco will enthuse fans, historians and even those, like yours truly, whose familiarity with Beethoven is limited to the opening strains of his 5th Symphony.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Oct 30, 2009

It features over sixty live performances, and there are a few pompous musicians and musicologists among the interviewees. But the engaging ones comfortably outnumber them...

| Oct 30, 2009

Just as Beethoven's composing process is equated to that of a sculptor like Michelangelo, Grabsky has sculpted a mesmerising film ripe with crescendos and modulations that allow us an even greater appreciation of the man's music

| Oct 2, 2009

A well-researched documentary that's equally illuminating and captivating.

| Original Score: 8.21/10 | Sep 25, 2009

After the monotonous guide through history that was In Search of Mozart, Phil Grabsky's follow-up plays like a much-needed shot of adrenaline to the brain.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Sep 25, 2009

A visual biography that employs scores of live performances reimagining the master(TM)s infinite range -- from raging to ethereal.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Sep 25, 2009