Glatpoti
It is so daring, it is so ambitious, it is so thrilling and weird and pointed and powerful. I never knew where it was going.
Delight
Yes, absolutely, there is fun to be had, as well as many, many things to go boom, all amid an atmospheric urban jungle.
neulinguistics
It's amazing how this poorly done movie still got published.Whoever was in charge for making this film didn't take a moment and think that the film was terrible. Was this film a school project for a drama class? Gustav Klimt was progressive. The movie was regressive.When I looked at the credits, Raoul Ruiz was mentioned. He died in 2011, so whatever anyone says about him is not fair. He is dead and cannot defend himself.When I looked again at the credits, various countries were listed that are responsible for this film. Austria was one of them. Any film that was done with Austria's help takes us back to the 19th Century with respect to movie-making techniques and technology.People in Austria---please stay away from producing any movies. They are just awful.
secondtake
Klimt (2006)John Malkovich is talented but so quirky and full of himself he nearly ruins many of his movies. Surely he sees how affected he can sometimes be? Here he plays the Austrian artist Gustav Klimt in the years before WWI, and though we don't quite know what Klimt was like, we know he didn't play his life being John Malkovich. Biopics always struggle with the character against the actor, of course, since history is what it is, and so you swallow all this and see what the actor and the director can do within these constraints.The director in this case is the late Raul Ruiz, the Chilean director who just died in Paris with a small cult following and a growing reputation. He concentrates not on Klimt's art, or even Klimt's attitudes as an artist of his time (this is the time of early Picasso, late Cezanne, and the growing influence of Gauguin). Instead it deals with Klimt's personality, which we know the least about, emphasizing his vulgarity, his obsession with nude women around him as much as possible, and his countless children for whom he apparently did as little as possible.What might have been more interesting is to see a young Klimt being transformed by a 6th century Italian fresco with all its gold leafwork (this is true), or to maybe see him interact with the Vienna Secessionists in their effort, as a group, to break from the academy. What we get instead is a fantasy about the women around him, including a bizarre and willing entrapment of Klimt by a wealthy woman and her double (or twin?) which turns into a kind of erotic sex game with a man watching behind 2-way glass. Then there is a mysterious fellow who seems to only exist in Klimt's head--he's fascinating, yet only half realized. If Ruiz had taken all this into something purely fantastic, where the trappings of history were shed, it might have been a transporting and special movie, an actual cinematic experience on its own terms. At times it tries, and there are some distortions and some beautiful moments, a bit out of place in the narrative, that stand on their own.But mostly this lurches and jerks from situation to situation. The art is great, what we see of it, and the sets are nice, though even they are filmed too often with a yellowed dullness that defies the outrageous decorative beauty of the time. (I just happened to see "The Wings of the Dove" set in the same period and the set and costume design blows "Klimt" away). All of this is too bad especially for an art movie about an artist who believed in total aesthetic immersion--where everything, including your toilet paper holder, had to be an artistic component of a life of art. It's not a disaster, but it's certainly a feminist's nightmare--where Klimt might have defended his painting of women as being honest and where the sex might have been free expression and liberation, the movie pushes all this into pure voyeurism and submissiveness. Women dangle and prance and decorate the movie sets, and your screen, the way Klimt, who was no feminist, might have approved, but which isn't accurate. It isn't about an equality in free loving sex, it's about women from a man's point of view. Period. Some of you will like that, but I did not.
lpd-1
extraordinary filmshocked, initially, at the comments i found herecame to this film by serendipityknow nothing about Ruiz' other work -- now i want to see it allbeautiful beautiful beautiful -- writing and design and photography and musicshocked by its beauty and shocked by its reception -- tho i see there are only 34 comments here -- not primetime -- a gaggle of geese -- with sincere apologies to geese everywhere...rent it-- buy it -- a real piece of work
Devon H
I am a very generous person when it comes to criticism. But seriously... I expected to learn something about this man and walked away confused and emotionally dead...actually, quite frustrated. Perhaps I'm spoiled by films that have a plot and films that clearly let you know why a character is doing something. I had no idea why Klimt was doing ANYTHING. What did he want? Who did he want? I understand very, very little about this man and what he cared about and what motivated him. Every female character looked too much like the other, I couldn't even tell who the object of his desires was! I'm actually considering another 20 minute bike ride in the past-midnight Tokyo winter to rent another film just to leave myself satisfied...Jeez...
