Did you people see the same film I saw?

Best movie of this year hands down!

This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

Ken Russell is not for all tastes, for me there is stuff of his I do like but others not so much, so I can definitely see either side. I absolutely love Elgar though, for me it is quite possibly the best that he has ever done and also one of the best documentaries ever made. The photography is just beautiful, the final shot will stay with me forever. The use of long shots and none of the actors speaking is for then an innovation that Russell in Elgar mastered. The scenery is just breathtaking, while Elgar's music is glorious, very lyrical and sometimes with pathos. It is helped by being beautifully played as well, that always does help. The dramatisations are subtle and beautifully sympathetic, even without words the body language and expressions told so much. The biographical elements are just fascinating, I love documentaries where you have a good amount about the subject yet the documentary reveals things you don't know. That was the case with Elgar. Russell's directing is more restrained than his later output and all the better for it, nothing overblown and distasteful in sight.All in all, no complaints whatsoever about Elgar. If you love classical music it is a must see, truly one of the best of its kind. 10/10 Bethany Cox

While considered something of a breakthrough in British TV, coming early in the director's career, he wasn't allowed to use actors in his film on composer Sir Edward Elgar other than in long shot or have them speak! Despite this fact (and noting also that none of Russell's subsequent trademark excesses are to be found here), I was surprisingly engrossed in it regardless. Incidentally, in the accompanying audio commentary, it's revealed that some of the episodes depicted (or mentioned in the almost-constant narration) had no real basis in fact – with the director readily admitting that he had to fabricate much of it simply because there just wasn't that much known about Elgar at the time to begin with! Russell makes good use of stock footage, ably juxtaposing military/royal parade with the horrors of war (Elgar lived through both the Boer conflict and the First World War). Besides, he doesn't beat around the bush and repeatedly states that Elgar's talent was all but appreciated in his homeland and that the composer himself would eventually come to somewhat begrudge the fact that his best-known piece was the stirring yet ultra-jingoistic "Land Of Hope And Glory" (so popular that it was virtually held as a second national anthem for Great Britain while, as Russell explains in the commentary, this music is played at the graduation ceremony of every school in America)! When all is said and done, however, the film is at its most effective during the lyrical passages in the countryside.

Elgar was made by three people: Ken Russell, Humphrey Burton and Huw Wheldon. All three liked Elgar's music and all three thought him under-rated. They set about, with the aid of legendary researcher Anne James, to gather as much information about the great Edwardian as possible, and soon they had vast amounts of material with which they could tell the story of Elgar's life. Russell and Wheldon fought their famous battle about the role of actors - which, contrary to general opinion, both won - but both Wheldon and Russell and Humphrey Burton were not happy with what they had. It was Burton who finally said what all were thinking - that they were not telling the right story. The right story was not the story of Elgar but the story of Elgar's music. Burton and Russell spent a week doing nothing but listening to Elgar and emerged with a 50 minute soundtrack including snippets short and long. Now they set about making pictures to go with the music. In other words the music was not an accompaniment, the music was the thing itself. The pictures illustrated it. Speaking actors would have shifted the balance of the film back towards words and pictures. The power of 'Elgar' lies in the primacy it gives to the composer's music. Often referred to as 'Ken Russell's 'Elgar'', this film is actually Elgar's Elgar, and therein lies its claim for legendary status.

This is one of the greatest art documentaries ever made. The young Ken Russell was innovative in just about every aspect of this astonishing semi-documentary profile of the composer Elgar. The BBC would only let him use actors in long shots and they were not allowed to speak. However, Russell transcended those limitations with apparently effortless ease, and thereby created a new genre altogether. The final shot of the film is one of the most moving in any motion picture. Elgar's personality and vicissitudes come across powerfully, with pathos and sympathy, and an extensive and inspired use of his music. The shots of the Malvern Hills of Worcestershire as they were in 1961 are astonishing, a reminder of how irrevocably the English landscape has changed. Everyone with the slightest interest in music or in England should see this film. It is irresistible.