Director: Serge Ioan Celibidachi
The Yellow Tie (Cravata Galbenă), directed and co-written by Serge Ioan Celibidachi, is an affectionate, sometimes uneasy portrait of his father, the Romanian conductor and composer Sergiu Celibidache. Produced by Celibidachi’s wife, Adela, it stars Ben Schnetzer and John Malkovich as the young and older Sergiu, with Kate Phillips, Miranda Richardson, Sean Bean and others in supporting roles.
Celibidache (1912–1996) was one of the most formidable conductors of the twentieth century. His career included the Berlin and Munich Philharmonics, the RAI National Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre de Radio France and Swedish Radio Symphony Orchestra. He also worked in Britain, where pianist Eileen Joyce described him as the greatest conductor she had encountered: “he was the only one who got inside my soul.”
Yet his most famous musical conviction was a refusal. Celibidache would not allow his performances to be commercially recorded, insisting that music could not offer its full, almost transcendental experience outside the concert hall. The irony is that much of his work was recorded for radio and subsequently released, with his family’s consent, after his death.
That contradiction gives The Yellow Tie its central tension.
The film opens with the ageing Sergiu (Malkovich) conducting before he alerts security to an oddly dressed woman. A discussion about filming his performances quickly descends into expletives and talk of “murdering” music. It is an emphatic introduction to a man for whom artistic principle could become almost indistinguishable from personal obsession.
From there, the film moves between the ageing conductor and the boy consumed by music. Celibidachi bathes the childhood scenes in an unearthly glow, setting them against the harshness of Sergiu’s father (Sean Bean) and the family’s expectations. The young boy’s imagination and the older man’s memories become entwined: this is history as reconstructed by a son who knew his father intimately in later life but can only approach his childhood through stories and imagination.
The yellow tie, or at least its colour, becomes the film’s most persistent visual metaphor. It represents the conflict between the harsh reality of life and the fantasy inherent in the pursuit of artistic perfection. It is also the literal gift passed to Sergiu by his father, with its expectation of political or military achievement. Instead, music becomes his escape. “You will be a king without a crown,” he is told by a friend.
Disowned by his family, Sergiu pursues what his father dismisses as a “gypsy life”. He plays piano in a bar, finds work through Ortancia (Tamzin Merchant) and shares her lodging. Even in grubby surroundings, he searches for beauty and perfection.
Then comes Berlin. Germany is changing, and the danger to minorities and opponents of the regime becomes increasingly apparent. Ptof Thiessen (Robert Dölle) helps Sergiu find control and grace as a conductor and gain admission to the Berlin Music Conservatoire with distinction. By 1938, “Heil Hitler” precedes lectures and Sergiu is targeted by racist officers. At home in Romania, his siblings witness the brutality of Nazi rule.
The film’s darker passages are punctuated by flashes of yellow – a piece of street furniture, a scratch of paint – as though the colour itself is struggling to survive.
Later, in post-war Berlin, Sergiu confronts the compromises of a broken musical institution, including quota appointments and pressure to make recordings. Martin Steinke (Anton Lesser), who understands the significance of silence, provides a counterweight to his intensity: “Listen to the silences.”
Sergiu eventually travels to Peru, continuing the restless journey begun decades earlier. The film becomes increasingly surreal as he reshapes local orchestras, capturing both his extraordinary musicianship and his increasingly eccentric temperament.
Miranda Richardson’s Ioana, seen in later life, is quiet but tenacious. She is more than a match for Malkovich’s weary, prickly Sergiu. Kate Phillips gives the younger Ioana an equally memorable presence. Their first meeting is a beautifully judged moment: she remembers that Sergiu once played piano for her ballet class when she was a girl. She is married, but neither seems particularly concerned. There is danger, connection, love and, perhaps most importantly, acceptance.
But the film cannot quite escape its own central contradiction. Its repeated return to Celibidache’s rejection of recordings becomes increasingly heavy-handed. And when The Yellow Tie incorporates around a dozen actual Celibidache recordings, the irony becomes impossible to ignore. There are many musical highlights, some played by modern orchestras, but hearing the real conductor raises the very question the film is built around: what, exactly, is lost when music leaves the concert hall?
The perfectionism of the father is ultimately mirrored by that of the son. Serge Ioan Celibidachi is determined not simply to tell his father’s story but to capture his essence. In doing so, he creates a film that is at its best when it embraces uncertainty, when memory, music and imagination overlap, and less convincing when it insists on explaining its contradictions.
The Yellow Tie is therefore both biography and act of reconciliation: an affectionate son trying to understand an extraordinary, difficult father. Its greatest achievement is recognising that the man cannot be separated from the music, even if the music itself resists being captured.
The Yellow Tie is released in UK Cinemas on 9 October.
