Mao to Mozart (Moview Review)

MAO TO MOZART: ISAAC STERN IN CHINA

Produced by Harmony Film Group in 1980, Director: Murray Lerner. 

Running Time: Approximately 1 hour and 25 minutes in color

First of all, let me introduce all of you who have never heard of him to Isaac Stern.  He is a celebrated and professional concert violinist who lived through most of the twentieth century and died an octogenarian in 2002.  He was closely associated with the New York Philharmonic; he won several awards including the Medal of Freedom, a Kennedy Center Honor and he was the one largely responsible for saving Carnegie Hall from destruction when the powers that be in Manhattan wanted to tear it down.  He raised both financial and moral support for its preservation.  Stern also contributed greatly to the nurturing of new young musical talent and to the preservation of musical treasures.  But the highlight of his humanitarian service was his visit to China in 1979.  In view of the fact that U.S.-China relations are very much a current subject in the news and perhaps entering a new phase of diplomatic accord, I think it appropriate that we take another look at this classic documentary that has captured so many hearts and opened so many eyes and won the Oscar for Best Feature Length Documentary released in 1980 .  After three decades it is still being viewed and can be rented through Netflix.

The purpose of the trip according to him was essentially to get to know the people – a “howdya-do more so than a concert tour.”   Stern in the film puts it this way: I went “to say hello through music.”  And the people there loved him.  They opened their doors wide to him – the doors to their hearts as well as their music conservatories.  He observed them, instructed them, performed with them, ate and drank with them, and most of all listened to what they had to say and how they regarded western classics.  He even did a lot of hugging and made deep and lasting and affectionate friendships with many individuals.  By the time of the trip he was quite a corpulent man; he did not move at a very rapid pace.  But he was very warm to everyone; they treated him like a grandfather and hung onto his every word and gesture, however much he had to depend upon interpreters.  Even during rehearsals for a concert he was prevailed upon to give, the auditorium was packed, every seat taken.  Think of it: they lapped up the rehearsals.  Ever heard of that on this side of the globe? 

It is a very intimate picture we are given, but it is clear that on a grand scale he contributed enormously to the opening of cultural exchange doors between our two countries.  He was on a mission to bring faraway places together, and he succeeded beyond all expectations.     

What gives the film its place in the pantheon of great documentary work is the fact that Stern keeps, if not a low, then at least a middling profile all through it.  The Chinese people, especially the many gifted young music students, are the stars.  Lots of local color and scenery is photographed – the Great Wall, peasants working the rice fields, the streets of Shanghai and Peking with bicycles everywhere, river barges, breathtaking mountains and rivers, vaudeville shows highlighted by some of the most skillful acrobatics my eyes have ever beheld!  There are extended sections of the footage that simply take us around, without narration.  I experienced a tremendous glow when near the beginning of his tour a Chinese orchestra – on their own instruments, bearing little resemblance to ours – plays “Oh, Susanna” to welcome him, and they play it smartly and excitedly and with phenomenal skill. 

The best parts of it for me, however, are the music lessons.  In the narration he observes that the Chinese were not accustomed to playing music “with passion or variety of color.”  Watching him draw the passion and color out of those inhibited students, showing them how to follow through with the bow, and how to play as if they were singing brought me to tears.  He urges one young girl in particular, who has just given him a neat, accurate and perfunctory rendition of a piece, to sing the notes, using her dainty voice.  She does.  Then he tells her to play it again as if she were singing through the instrument, exactly as she has just sung it.  She does, and the difference is astonishing.  She looks so pleased with herself, knowing she has made a tremendous breakthrough.  You can see the light dawn.

The people teach him a few things too.  He learns about their history.  He hears about the so-called Cultural Revolution under Mao and how it impacted so brutally upon the musicians, how the Communists tried to eliminate all trace of the culture of “foreign devils.”  We hear the Director of the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, Tan Shuzhen, relate the gothic horror tale of his imprisonment and torture.  Tan tells the tale straight into the camera, all the excruciating details, over the space of five minutes or so. 

Stern learns how far advanced their musicianship is, far more than he ever expected.  And he learns how much more open their world is to new discoveries than western propaganda had led us to believe.  And you cannot help but be fascinated when they show him their own instruments and acquaint him with how they are played.  And for us music lovers there are enjoyable performances of such masters as Mozart and Beethoven and Brahms and Kreisler, with Stern on the solo violin and the native conductor and orchestra, all in perfect harmony and tandem with each other’s tempo and rhythm. 

There are, as in most dvds, special features, called extras in this case.  One is a titled biographical summary of Stern’s life, telling you far more than I have room to mention here.  And there is a documentary short called “Musical Encounters” that deals with Stern’s return to China twenty years later – in 1999.  We get to see some of the children in the first film grown up and keeping on with their careers two decades later.  Warm reunions!  And more of the same kind of mutually edifying moments of give and take!  I have only one regret – that I never had the chance to meet this marvelous man, shake his hand, and thank him for what he did.  Music as Cultural as well as Spiritual Healer!  I urge all of you to take the trip with him.