It can't be comfortable to work with a genius, and Agniezka Holland's fiction makes it very uncomfortable indeed. The genius is the ill, deaf and cantankerous Beethoven (Ed Harris) and the put-upon co-worker is Anna (Diane Kruger), who helps to copy out his scores. She also has to empty his slops, clean out his rat-ridden apartment and persuade him to listen to compositions of her own.

Fortunately, Beethoven begins to see her value as a helpmeet and she begins to understand just why his music is unmatchable.

The film could have been risible in less sensitive hands, and there are one or two giggles to be had. But the period is well and extravagantly evoked, Harris is pretty damned good as Beethoven, and Holland's understanding of his copiously illustrated music, which includes the Choral Symphony and, more daringly, decent extracts from his late piano sonatas and quartets, makes this a film that sounds as good as it looks.

Is there any point to it, though, considering it is pure fiction and not fact? Well, Holland obviously thinks so and paints Anna as a figure who is at first derided and becomes a worthy participant in history through sheer persistence. And even the least sensitive filmgoer ought to respond to the music, and perhaps to Beethoven's dictum that academic shape and form is nothing compared to the sheer inspiration of dazzling sounds.

Both Harris and Kruger are much more than adequate, with Harris not only looking like Beethoven but spitting out his well-written lines with real panache. You can mock this film if you like, but it remains watchable throughout. And the ears have it when the eyes don't.