Watch on Soap2day. RAVEL'S BRAIN is a musical/visual tone poem at once tragic and celebratory in its mood. The film portrays the inner being of a great artist who was rendered incapable of communicating with the outside world. For the last five years of his life, Maurice Ravel was the victim of his own lamentable circumstances. Afflicted by aphasia and apraxia, his brain produced music, but he was unable to write it down.