Testiomony has a lot of good points about it. It is an excellent performance by Ben Kingsley, provides some riveting use of Shostakovich's music to convey the mood of various scenes throughout the film, and gives an chilling view into Stalinist Russia. Its weaknesses are that it is hard to follow for anyone not familiar with the time period it chronicles, it is based on a book of questionable authenticity (many scholars argue that the words written in Testimony are Volkov's rather than Shostakovich's) and it has glaring errors for anyone who can read Cyrillic. (There are several signs apparently written in Cyrillic that use Latin letters that either don't exist in Cyrillic or are completely different. A glaring example is Glazunov dropping student assignments into boxes marked with Cyrillic letters and then referencing one he calls the I box. There is no I in Cyrillic.
Nonetheless, Kingsley's performance is flawless, and the film gives a good idea to the Western viewer of things like Stalin's Cult of Personality, and the terror intellectuals like Shostakovich experienced at night hearing car doors slam and worrying that they were next to be taken to be questioned, shot, or God knows what.
In its defense, this film is a little less relentless with symbolic imagery than Palmer's film biography of Wagner which, while very good in many regards, was incredibly long and disjoint.
The convention of having Shostakovich narrate the film from the grave was particularly effective. For a music student studying Shostakovich, it's worth a look if you can find it. The book is interesting as well, but again, it's questionable how much of it actually represents the words of Shostakovich.
Nonetheless, Kingsley's performance is flawless, and the film gives a good idea to the Western viewer of things like Stalin's Cult of Personality, and the terror intellectuals like Shostakovich experienced at night hearing car doors slam and worrying that they were next to be taken to be questioned, shot, or God knows what.
In its defense, this film is a little less relentless with symbolic imagery than Palmer's film biography of Wagner which, while very good in many regards, was incredibly long and disjoint.
The convention of having Shostakovich narrate the film from the grave was particularly effective. For a music student studying Shostakovich, it's worth a look if you can find it. The book is interesting as well, but again, it's questionable how much of it actually represents the words of Shostakovich.