History Film / TheRedViolin

* PoweredByAForsakenChild: The Red Violin. From when Cesca begins to read Anna's cards, the path she lays out strongly resembles the violin's life. But it's unclear whether the future she reads is for Anna or her unborn son [[spoiler:-- and then, if the violin should be seen as carrying Anna's spirit or his.]]

* ShoutOut: During the scenes when Victoria is away and he has lost his muse and inspiration, a number of shots of Frederick Pope lying sprawled about listless and weak bring to mind the famous Jacques-Louis David painting [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_Marat "The Death of Marat"]]--one even comes very close to reproducing it, with Pope in the bathtub reading one of Victoria's letters. Marat was a political revolutionary, Pope a musical one; Marat was murdered by a woman (Charlotte Corday), while Victoria appeared about to murder Pope before shooting the violin instead. (Corday used a dagger.) [[spoiler:In the end Pope still died, by suicide instead.]] There are even some similarities in features between Marat and the actor who played Pope.

* RewatchBonus: Even though the movie cycles through the scenes repeatedly, rewatching the first auction sequence makes you realize what is going on already.

** It should also be pointed out that the evolution of time from the days of the Chinese Revolution is evident in Ming himself. Given that he tries to bid upwards of a million dollars for the violin, he must have become a wealthy businessman, something that would have been frowned upon in China's past, given that his parents were Communist Party members.

* [[IllGirl Ill Boy]]: Kasper Weiss, with a congenital heart defect.

* MaybeMagicMaybeMundane: The dark fates of the violin's owners and the obsession it creates could simply be attributed to the costs of artistic excellence and human nature. Its owner's habits of playing a particular tune could be could be the result of trained ears being subtly guided by the resonance points the academic researcher finds. The mysterious power of the music it produces could be the result of a masterwork finding itself in the hands of gifted musicians. Nevertheless, a number of characters seem to sense something a bit... [[ArtifactOfDoom off]]... about the instrument.

* NotSoDifferent: Morritz and Busotti, although they never meet and are not antagonistic to each other, are shown as being very alike: passionate about music and violins, fastidious, [[NiceToTheWaiter prone to be jerks to the people who work for them]], and both have troubled home lives (Busotti worried about his wife having a child late in life; Morritz's work taking him far away from his family, which strains them).

* ShoutOut: During the scenes when Victoria is away and he has lost his muse and inspiration, a number of shots of Frederick Pope lying sprawled about listless and weak bring to mind the famous Jacques-Louis David painting [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_Marat "The Death of Marat"]]--one even comes very close to reproducing it, with Pope in the bathtub reading one of Victoria's letters. Marat was a political revolutionary, Pope a musical one; Marat was murdered by a woman (Charlotte Corday), while Victoria appeared about to murder Pope before shooting the violin instead. (Corday used a dagger.) In the end Pope still died, by suicide instead. There are even some similarities in features between Marat and the actor who played Pope.

* BookEnds: The first music we hear in the film, "Anna's Theme," is a woman humming a lullaby, which blends into the sound of a perfectly matched violin. Listen until the end of the credits, and the violin's music fades away, to be replaced once more by Anna's sad voice.

** In the opening scenes, as Morritz enters the auction room, he passes by a man desperately trying to enter the auction itself. That man is Nicholas Olsberg, the representative from the Pope Foundation as revealed by the scenes in Oxford.

* DarkSecret: The red violin's beautiful and distinctive varnish [[spoiler: is made with Anna's blood.]]

* DrivenToSuicide: [[spoiler:Frederick Pope, after Victoria leaves him and shoots at his violin]].
** Played with for Busotti, as the death of his wife and son leads him to close his violin business for good, but not after creating one last piece.
* FailedASpotCheck: Played Straight and Averted. [[spoiler:While Morritz is swapping out the real Red Violin for the replica, he drops the auction tag and doesn't notice it. When Leroux is about to call security after noticing the tag is missing, Evan finds the dropped tag in the inventory room.]]
* {{Foreshadowing}}: In the very first scene Busotti shows that he would rather destroy a violin of his workshop than produce an instrument that's only meant to be a collector's piece, never played or loved. [[spoiler: It turns out that Morritz is of the same mind.]]

* KnowWhenToFoldEm: Ollsbeg is one of the last ones bidding, but ultimately gives up and wearily says to let the next highest bidder have it.

* MockGuffin: [[spoiler: The red violin that we first see in the film, the one up for auction that attracts all of the drama, is a high-quality fake. Morritz walked out with the original five minutes ago. See MeaninglessVillainVictory.]]

* MuseAbuse: Frequently Played With throughout the movie, in different forms for different storylines.

* OnlyInItForTheMoney: Monsieur Poussin adopts Kaspar Weiss not for love or to improve his talent, but only to sell his talent to the highest bidder (as Poussin is under significant financial duress). When Weiss meets an untimely death, he has the gall to ask the monks for the Red Violin itself, hoping to sell it.

* RedHerring: When the monks tell Poussin that they buried the violin with Kaspar and then leave him at the graveside, the way the scene is shot makes it appear likely to the viewer that he intends to open the coffin to steal it back. [[spoiler:Instead the GraveRobbing that is shown immediately after this is revealed to have been carried out by a band of Roma, not Poussin.]]

* TechnicianVersusPerformer: As mentioned above, M. Poussin is a bona fide Technician, and trains Kaspar this way, saying that the metronome is the master of music, while Frederick Pope is a passionate Performer who seems immune to criticism, direction, or even schedules. Notably, Busotti, the violin's maker, falls somewhere in between: he is fastidious and precise in his craftsmanship, but his love and passion for music and his wife drives him.

** The GraveRobbing gypsies, who play it for another century before ending up in Frederick Pope's possession.

** The Chinese servant who delivers Frederick Pope's mail (both his own letters to Victoria and hers to him) turns out to be the one who receives the violin and sells it to the secondhand dealer in Shanghai. Since Pope had said she could do whatever she wanted with his possessions and obviously she would want nothing to do with the violin, she must have let him take it.

[[TwoLinesDifferentTimes Meanwhile]], an auction house in Montreal prepares to open bidding on the violin, now recognized as a priceless treasure. Over the course of the film, we gradually come to learn the connections that lead many of the attendees to seek the violin, and how many lives the instrument has affected for good or ill.

MeanwhileInTheFuture an auction house in Montreal prepares to open bidding on the violin, now recognized as a priceless treasure. Over the course of the film, we gradually come to learn the connections that lead many of the attendees to seek the violin, and how many lives the instrument has affected for good or ill.