Catalonian avant-garde filmmaker Pere Portabella expresses his adoration of Johann Sebastian Bach through an odd, rambling, privately formed essay that all too rarely connects with the viewer. A truck driver having breakfast discusses the disrespect accorded his profession; a female cellist takes a show-all shower; a blind piano tuner does his work while his seeing-eye dog lies beneath the piano. What are those scenes about? Even the interlude re-creations of Bach's life, with Johann (harpsichordist Christian Brembeck) wandering in a wig through Leipzig's St. Thomas Church, offer little insight. There are divine bursts of Bach music — a boy's chorus, Brembeck on the organ, a subway car of young cellists — but they might be more potent on their own as opposed to being spliced into this perplexing film.
