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Reviews

Vitus

Slips toward mediocrity

By PETER KEOUGH | July 24, 2007

2.5 Stars

VIDEO: Watch the trailer for Vitus.

Even without looking up the list of last year’s Best Foreign Language Oscar nominees, an astute viewer could guess that Swiss veteran director Fredi M. Murer’s Vitus would be on it. A cute and exceptional little boy, a lovable old geezer — you don’t have to be Pauline Kael to realize this formula is a winner. The cute kid of the title is the ultimate prodigy: at six he looks up words like “paradoxical,” scares fellow kindergarteners with tales of global warming, and warms up on the keyboard with Franz Liszt. No wonder that all the other kids hate him, or that Vitus ponders whether mediocrity and conformity might be preferable. That’s the direction the movie itself goes in, abandoning the issues it raises, and turning our hero into the kind of wise guy who will go over well in the Hollywood version. Real-life piano whiz Teo Gheorghiu adds a feral note to the older Vitus, and when it comes to geezers, you can’t beat Bruno Ganz. Just watching him dance with a bucket is worth all the clichés.

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Topics: Reviews , Pauline Kael, Franz Liszt, Bruno Ganz

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