Review: The Yellow Tie

The Yellow Tie is a biopic of Romanian conductor and composer Sergiu Celibidache, a brilliant musician who became renowned just after the end of WW2. Directed by the musicians real son Serge Ioan Celebidachi, this is a labour of love. Celibidache became famous for his belief that LPs and CDs were unnecessary, and that music had to be experienced live, in the authentic present.

Played as an older man in his rural French retirement by John Malkovich, and by Ben Schnetzer as the younger man, the story tells us that Celibidache father (Sean Bean) was against him becoming a musician, as he expected him to be the next president of Romania, but he was a prodigy whose musical ambition took him away from his family to hone his gift and travel the world. 

Celibidache’s father gifts him a yellow tie, then demands it be returned when the young man refuses to give up music. He spends all his adult trying to appease his father. Despite never seeing him again.

Now this may sound like a ‘difficult to watch’ sort of film, but not only is it sumptuous to look at, it’s also a really good story, and the musical interludes, when Celibidache is in front of an orchestra conducting, are quite wonderful and give you a sense of the man (though I must admit Malkovich’s conducting is basically waving his arms out of time!).

A solid film, and well worth a watch even if you have no idea who Celibidache was. 

Review by Tina from a streaming link kindly supplied by Icon Film Distribution via Fetch Publicity.