Search - Ralph Vaughan Williams' Sinfonia Antarctica on DVD

Powerful images set to powerful music

R. Evans | Montgomery AL | 12/26/2005

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Although this film is not (unfortunately) a film of a concert performance of this great symphony, it is appealing in its own right. Vaughan Williams's stunning music provides the backdrop to equally stunning images of the southernmost continent. The pictures -- of land, sea, sky, and wildlife in and out of the water -- are compelling, and the documentary shots of failed expeditions to the South Pole are grim reminders that this is an unforgiving place. One wishes that someone would film the great Vaughan Williams symphonies in the ways that works of other great composers have been filmed; the techniques used to film excerpts from some of the Shostakovich symphonies in the documentary film "Shostakovich Against Stalin" (for instance) could be put to very effective in filming the best of Vaughan Williams' works. Surely the BBC should consider undertaking such a project; surely there would be a market for such films. In the meantime, Andre Previn's film dealing with the Shostakovich Fifth does offer the third movement from the Vaughan Williams Fifth, but that brief taste only leaves one hungering for more VW on video."