KLIMT
KLIMT (2006) dr Raoul Ruiz
The artist Gustav Klimt (1862-1918) is dying in Vienna. Visited by Egon Schiele (1890-1918), a rival competitor but mostly a friend, the narrative of his life and times in Paris and Vienna unfolds. Through the lens we see Klimt´s paintings, Klimt´s women and Klimt´s friends. Klimt is an anguished man, whether painting or fighting in the street. Klimt is distressed, the mirror breaks. The mirror broken revokes both past and present as onlooker and subject are implicated in the destruction of an entire world, the world that preceeded the First World War. A man standing up and fornicating with a woman in the hospital where Klimt is lying in agony. Eins, zwei he cries. A war veteran interrupts a high-society bash to give his personal testament, a front fighter disabled, ranting, but he is ignored. The moments in the film when the illusion of bourgeois comfort are interrupted and another Vienna fills the lense, are the moments that make this incredibly slow and boring film successful and interesting. To recreate a world that has largely vanished is fascinating but also a terrifying ordeal and, of course, incredibly painful. Memories are like old photographs that mean nothing when the context has been destroyed and all of the people to whom those images might have had significance, are dead. For this reason Klimt is a fascinating source of memory and its betrayal and destruction in the horrors of war.
The film views Klimt´s life retrospectively, so we begin with the finality and reality of death which mirrors an exterior world, where an entire, self-confident civilisation is defeated, every certainty of luxury, comfort and the illusion of progress has been shattered, just as Klimt´s mirror shatters throughout the film. Detailed explanations of Klimt´s aesthetic theories echo throughout the film, but there is also an emphasis placed on Klimt´s, mostly sexual relationships, with his models and the professional relationships he enjoyed with, the mostly female, aristocratic clientelle of the Viennesse fin de siecle. This is a world that is incredibly exotic, erotic, but also entirely remote to contemporary viewers. Perhaps more could have been done to show the underside of Viennese life because almost everything appears as a chocolate box depiction, except for the few interruptions when that comfort and security are interrupted, if only then to be excluded. Egon Schiele (played by Klaus Kinski´s son, Nikolai who makes an interesting debut) is a perhaps too confident figure. Schiele died very early, in 1918, a year after Klimt´s own death, and this viewer perhaps expected a more manic creation. But his youthfulness and excessive confidence counterpoints Klimt´s agony as he faces the finality of death.
Perhaps the film is ultimately very slow and boring but it is certainly credible and interesting at the same time if only for Malkovitch´s enduring and endearing performance. The limitations of the scenes and sets and also the small cast make it seem like an extended play and this is something that the director Ruiz seems entirely aware of. To offset this, he spins his subjects around against the backdrop of salons, studio or bordello, but the effect is of a director reaching for a more plastic or flowing effect when the narrative is largely eventless and freed of action. Events are compiled and very little happens or is decided, but this is all offset against the undoubted beauty of the mise en scene and the costumes, especially the womens´ costumes and their incredible, wonderful and very tall hats. This is definitely an effective piece of art house film-making which won´t reach a mass audience in this cut version, but probably deserves to. There is a definite attempt to translate a subject and make it palpable to an audience, as opposed to recent films, such as the Da Vinci Code which seem to pander, or better still, exploit, a mass audience that has rejected interest in the past (or perhaps the film wishes that the audience would reject such an interest...) and its many wonderful and terrifying episodes and replaced this with conspiracy fantasies, crackpot histories, fake wigs, albino monks and the rest.
Paul Murphy, Munich
The artist Gustav Klimt (1862-1918) is dying in Vienna. Visited by Egon Schiele (1890-1918), a rival competitor but mostly a friend, the narrative of his life and times in Paris and Vienna unfolds. Through the lens we see Klimt´s paintings, Klimt´s women and Klimt´s friends. Klimt is an anguished man, whether painting or fighting in the street. Klimt is distressed, the mirror breaks. The mirror broken revokes both past and present as onlooker and subject are implicated in the destruction of an entire world, the world that preceeded the First World War. A man standing up and fornicating with a woman in the hospital where Klimt is lying in agony. Eins, zwei he cries. A war veteran interrupts a high-society bash to give his personal testament, a front fighter disabled, ranting, but he is ignored. The moments in the film when the illusion of bourgeois comfort are interrupted and another Vienna fills the lense, are the moments that make this incredibly slow and boring film successful and interesting. To recreate a world that has largely vanished is fascinating but also a terrifying ordeal and, of course, incredibly painful. Memories are like old photographs that mean nothing when the context has been destroyed and all of the people to whom those images might have had significance, are dead. For this reason Klimt is a fascinating source of memory and its betrayal and destruction in the horrors of war.
The film views Klimt´s life retrospectively, so we begin with the finality and reality of death which mirrors an exterior world, where an entire, self-confident civilisation is defeated, every certainty of luxury, comfort and the illusion of progress has been shattered, just as Klimt´s mirror shatters throughout the film. Detailed explanations of Klimt´s aesthetic theories echo throughout the film, but there is also an emphasis placed on Klimt´s, mostly sexual relationships, with his models and the professional relationships he enjoyed with, the mostly female, aristocratic clientelle of the Viennesse fin de siecle. This is a world that is incredibly exotic, erotic, but also entirely remote to contemporary viewers. Perhaps more could have been done to show the underside of Viennese life because almost everything appears as a chocolate box depiction, except for the few interruptions when that comfort and security are interrupted, if only then to be excluded. Egon Schiele (played by Klaus Kinski´s son, Nikolai who makes an interesting debut) is a perhaps too confident figure. Schiele died very early, in 1918, a year after Klimt´s own death, and this viewer perhaps expected a more manic creation. But his youthfulness and excessive confidence counterpoints Klimt´s agony as he faces the finality of death.
Perhaps the film is ultimately very slow and boring but it is certainly credible and interesting at the same time if only for Malkovitch´s enduring and endearing performance. The limitations of the scenes and sets and also the small cast make it seem like an extended play and this is something that the director Ruiz seems entirely aware of. To offset this, he spins his subjects around against the backdrop of salons, studio or bordello, but the effect is of a director reaching for a more plastic or flowing effect when the narrative is largely eventless and freed of action. Events are compiled and very little happens or is decided, but this is all offset against the undoubted beauty of the mise en scene and the costumes, especially the womens´ costumes and their incredible, wonderful and very tall hats. This is definitely an effective piece of art house film-making which won´t reach a mass audience in this cut version, but probably deserves to. There is a definite attempt to translate a subject and make it palpable to an audience, as opposed to recent films, such as the Da Vinci Code which seem to pander, or better still, exploit, a mass audience that has rejected interest in the past (or perhaps the film wishes that the audience would reject such an interest...) and its many wonderful and terrifying episodes and replaced this with conspiracy fantasies, crackpot histories, fake wigs, albino monks and the rest.
Paul Murphy, Munich
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