Becoming Beethoven’s Ninth

I have just directed a film that has inadvertently become the most personal that I’ve made by far. What was to have been a glowing tribute to the greatest of all classical composers took a violent turn that has affected me and all of my family in a terrible and terrifying way.

In late December 2022, I was approached by a long-time colleague at ARTE/ZDF about the possibility of making a film on Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony to commemorate the 200th anniversary of the work’s premiere in May 2024.

Having already made a film about Beethoven some years ago, the idea left me somewhat cold, but I decided to delve into the subject a bit to see if it stirred my creative passions. I read a recent book dedicated exclusively to the Ninth by my friend Harvey Sachs and, though moved by Beethoven’s Enlightenment-fuelled intentions, I was not convinced. So, I told the commissioner, “Thank you, but no thank you,” and escaped on an extended trip to forget the whole thing. Then, during an early-morning excursion in the mountains of the Palm Springs desert, one of those unsolicited and cursed epiphanies seized me. I thought to myself, “What if the newly formed Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra (UFO) were to perform that work for the film?” Both the orchestra and Beethoven’s symphony grew out of the same Enlightenment ideas of freedom, peace, tolerance, universal brotherhood, progress, rationality, and human­ism—all qualities it seems we can only dream about these turbulent days. I got up the nerve to email the orchestra’s Canadian–Ukrainian founder and conductor Keri-Lynn Wilson, knowing that the UFO had never performed the work and that it required an orchestra of 80, a choir of equal proportions and four solo vocalists. So, I knew full well that I would be summarily rejected and could go back to my ARTE commis­sioner a second time with a pathetic, “Well, I tried.” A week later, I got a call which amounted to a resounding “Yes!” Keri-Lynn had already spoken with the general director of the Warsaw Opera, who had agreed to offer his theatre and opera chorus and even help recruit soloists.

Keri-Lynn had called my bluff, and now I had no choice but to pursue the idea seriously—that be-careful-what-you-wish-for thing. Luckily, I had enthusiastic comrades in Toronto—Jason Charters and Liam Romalis of Riddle Films—who had produced our recent Dreaming of a Jewish Christmas (2017). They, in turn, approached the German cultural film company 3B-Produktion to coproduce, and our adventure began.

The problem was that our commissioners weren’t wild about putting all their eggs in one UFO-basket, and wanted us to fill out the idea with other Beethoven-inspired “characters” beyond the story of the Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra. They wanted something more multi-faceted in the style of my 2006 film Mozartballs, except more serious and less fun.

And so was born Beethoven’s Nine (à la Ocean’s Eleven), an attempt to connect nine diverse subjects who somehow personify something Beethovian, or that symphony, or the ideals that sparked its creation. We knew for sure that one of those was to be the Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra, collectively, and that Keri-Lynn herself warranted being designated a second character because of the sheer force of her convic­tion in founding it. The orchestra is composed of Ukrainian refugees as well as those who live close to the battlefront, so we knew our film was going to delve into some dark themes, however tempered by the guiding idealism of the musicians and their conductor.

We started to cast a wide net to fill out the other seven places. We became fascinated with the composer Gabriela Lena Frank, who has Peruvian roots, was born deaf—hearing nothing without her use of hear­ing aids—and also happens to be one of the most acclaimed composers of our time. Interestingly, she had written an op-ed in The New York Times about her belief that Beethoven had encoded his deafness into his music. So, there was no doubt that she should be enlisted.

As we explored the Enlightenment values that motivated both Schiller, the author of the poem “Ode to Joy” (which was adapted for the fourth movement of Beethoven’s Ninth), and the great composer himself, I thought of the great Canadian-born social scientist and writer Steven Pinker. In his 2018 book Enlightenment Now, Pinker suggests that, despite the setbacks of the last century and the media’s accentuation of all things foreboding, we are in fact living in the best time in human history. I was at first hesitant about approaching Steven because he had already rejected me once before for my 2019 film Propaganda: The Art of Selling Lies. His wife, the philosopher Rebecca Newberger Goldstein, had, however, taken part in that film, and just so happened to be a leading authority on the Enlightenment thinkers. They both said yes and agreed to be a formidable twofer—the Enlightenment power couple, as it were. We were up to five.

Another person who intrigued us, and who had greatly inspired Keri-Lynn Wilson, was none other than Leonard Bernstein, who passed away in 1990. A few months before his death, he embarked upon one of the most meaningful projects of his career. To mark the historic fall of the Berlin Wall in late 1989, he chose to conduct Beethoven’s Ninth in both East and West Berlin, the latter concert being broadcast live on Christmas morning. Watching that concert now with the hindsight that the maestro had only a few months left to live, his strain is visible, but so is his ecstasy as he manages the relentless 75-minute piece with all of his strength.

After that concert, and despite having been on the verge of collapse, Bernstein insisted on visiting the Wall to personally witness it being dismantled, bit by bit, by thousands of Berliners. There, he approached a man and his 11-year-old son, Franz, and asked if they could chisel out a piece for him as a keepsake. Franz recognized Bernstein, having just seen the broadcast of the concert, and handed him the chisel and hammer, suggesting that it would be far more meaningful if he did the honours himself. The photographs of that moment reveal an intense Bernstein, cigarette in mouth, hacking at the wall as an elated 11-year-old East Berliner watches on. We were able to locate that boy, now in his mid-40s, who glows to this day when he recalls that powerfully symbolic event, and conveys a poignant message about what is possible in our world. It is an ode to joy.

The seventh character is an incredible rock artist named Monika Brodka, who has been dubbed “the Polish Beethoven of rock/punk/pop.” Brodka is a young dynamo who struts on stage like a cross between Shakira and Mick Jagger, with the edgy lyrical sense of PJ Harvey or Lou Reed. To me, she is an emblem of the Enlightenment because of her self-evident emancipation as an intuitive and confident performer who is a superstar in Poland. That she insisted on attending the UFO rehearsals to get a chance to meet Keri-Lynn, as well as a better understanding of Beethoven himself, sold her as a subject for the film.

And is it even conceivable to make a film about Beethoven without Schroeder from the comic strip Peanuts? This toy-piano playing Beethoven devotee introduced legions around the world to the composer’s music, via both the comic strips and the TV specials. His creator, Charles M. Schulz, himself a Beethoven junkie, is no longer alive, but we talked to his wife Jeannie about her late husband and Schroeder. This segment is more lighthearted than the rest of the film, but no less meaningful.

Which leads us to a ninth character—the direct result of unforeseen circumstances during the making of the film.

October 7th, 2023. I received an ominous text from my sister Judih’s daughter, Iris, informing me that there had been an attack on Kibbutz Nir Oz, where Judih and her husband Gadi lived, and where their four children had grown up. Iris told me that her parents had been outside the kibbutz walls at the time of the attack, taking a walk at sunrise: “The last time we heard from them, they were lying face down in the fields with rockets over their heads.” What transpired that day is now well known. Even before the kibbutz had been breached, Hamas militants encountered Judih and Gadi on their walk and shot them point-blank. A recording of an emergency call that Judih made to Israel’s equivalent of 9-1-1 reveals that Gadi was most certainly dead, and that she had been shot in her arm and face—yet despite her audible anguish, she spoke coherently, unlike the operator who sounded far more panicked than my sister.

For the next three months, my sister was listed as being kidnapped by Hamas, with evidence that she, along with her husband’s lifeless body, had been taken to Gaza.

Naturally, these events were devastating to me and to my family—especially my mother, who had just turned 95. Judih had recently made a trip to Toronto to celebrate that event. On September 21st, she pulled me aside so our mom wouldn’t hear and told me that a serious Israel–Hamas war was imminent. “Why do you think that?” I asked. It was the perfect storm, she said, between incendiary Israeli politics, the election of a prime minister who should have been in prison, the disproportion­ate power of the vocal right-wing religious faction that pushes for settlements, and the anger of Palestinians amid increasing gunfire on their side of the wall. Judih and Gadi lived only two kilometres from Gaza. They could hear what was going on.

Judih added something that will forever haunt me—that “the second there’s a whisper of war, we’ll take the first flight.” She would come back to Canada, or Colorado, where one of her children lives, and leave Israel permanently. She had never said such a thing before.

In the 40-plus years she lived in Israel, Judih always believed she would survive. She was invested in her teaching, includ­ing a class in which she taught both Palestinian and Israeli children about the importance of co-operation and co-existence. She and Gadi were both committed to the idea of a two-state solution, but more than that, advocated for the Palestinian people and asserted that there could never be peace without a prosperous and flourishing Palestine. But now the danger seemed too imminent.

I reacted as I always do, pleading with her to stay in Toronto and have Gadi join her. But she calmly reas­sured me and had me take photos of her embracing our mother, and then I drove her to the airport. She returned to the kibbutz to live there with Gadi for what turned out to be a mere 16 days before the attack.

I am writing this because these events profoundly altered the course of my film.

October 7th was precisely the midway point of our film shoots. We had already filmed the Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra performing the Ninth in Warsaw and were just about to film our next subjects in California and the East Coast. I was in some kind of denial. We continued making the film I had planned to make before any of this happened. I thought of it as therapy. We filmed Gabriela Lena Frank without mention of the attacks, and even did bouncy street interviews with people speaking about cheerful subjects.

When I returned to Toronto, I went on a walk with my friend and DOP of Beethoven’s Nine, John Minh Tran. We headed towards downtown across the Bloor Viaduct, which was peppered with anti-Israel graffiti. A stenciled Star of David, dripping with blood, was emblazoned with the words “Free Palestine.” Though I did not object to the basic sentiment of the message and where it was coming from, it still jolted me and reminded me how vast and far-reaching the horrors of the war and the resulting hatred had spread. The pain was that much deeper because of my personal connection.

John said he had an idea that he knew I would hate but wanted me to consider. He knew how much of our filming was centred on the intensely painful personal stories of the Ukrainian–Russian struggle. But here was just as explosive a conflict, and one in which I was person­ally implicated and related to on a different level, no matter how much empathy I might have felt for our musicians. John’s idea was to turn the camera on me for an interview and ask our German and Canadian producers to contribute questions. John knows perfectly well that I’ve intentionally and adamantly avoided being in front of the camera on all of my films, that I don’t even want to hear my voice asking questions as I consider it a distraction from the message. But he was suggesting that, in effect, I become one of Beethoven’s nine.

The next morning, John interviewed me for two hours. He contin­ued to follow me over the following days as I visited my mother and, with my daughter Ali, called Minister of Foreign Affairs Mélanie Joly to ask for information about the hostages and Judih. John even followed Ali and me to the CBC as we prepared to be interviewed by Adrienne Arsenault for The National. So, as I write this, I am aware that I will be one of Beethoven’s nine, which is very surreal for me. On a more sober­ing note, it could make my family and me vulnerable, considering how highly charged all matters Israel–Palestine are.

On the other hand, it is nice to hang out with my old friend Ludwig van, who has preoccupied me for much of my filmmaking. He was a supremely courageous artist who did not bend to what others thought. He lived a life of increasing isolation due to his deafness, stormy tem­perament, and mounting illnesses. He had all but given up on humanity as he saw his Enlightenment-influenced youth yield to something very dark. In his lifetime, idealism had been turned upside down by a greedy aristocracy, tyrannical political leaders who had become increasingly autocratic and narcissistic, and a Church that, through its reactionary Restoration, tried to squelch all modern thought and persist in feeding dogma to the superstitious, God-fearing masses.

And yet, aware of his mortality and pain, Beethoven wrote the first symphony in history to be accompanied by words—words about love and freedom, hope and peace, embracing all of humanity and “kiss­ing the millions.” I believe he wrote this music both as a love letter to humankind and as a powerful protest piece. No matter how bad the world has become, and how despicable so many of the players, this was a symphony dedicated to a posterity where all might finally come together to embrace ideals that make life worth living.

For me, this idea is at the core of Beethoven’s Nine. Are we there? Are we yet worthy of the hopes and dreams of this highly evolved and thoroughly modern artist? Or has the Enlightenment fallen into an irretrievable abyss of darkness?

Beethoven’s Nine premiered at Hot Docs 2024.

It debuts on TVO on Oct. 4.