Raúl Ruiz's Klimt uses an amorphous, nonchronological narrative to cinematize events from the life of one of the 20th century's most profound artists: the Austrian painter Gustav Klimt (here portrayed by John Malkovich). Ruiz begins with Klimt's painful death from syphilis, and spends the remainder of the film transitioning, loosely and freely, between episodes that befell the painter. The film pays particularly strong attention to the artist's proclivity for scandalizing the European upper
crust with overtly erotic subject matter and presentation, and his many affairs -- notably a lengthy one with his perpetual inspiration, Lea de Castro (Saffron Burrows). Throughout Klimt's life, a figure known as the Secretary (Stephen Dillane) comes and goes, who is actually a product of his fevered imagination -- and with whom the painter debates continually about the function of art in contemporary Western civilization, and the relevance of the artist. This enables Ruiz to create both a biographical sketch and a philosophical treatise. Visually, Ruiz and director of photography Ricardo Aronovich make the ambitious decision to recreate Klimt's style of painting on a cinematographic plane. Unfortunately, difficulty befell this picture from the beginning, when the director (for some unascertainable reason) opted to draft the initial script in French, have it translated into German, and then have the German draft translated into English and revised by author Gilbert Adair -- rendering the dialogue stilted and unconvincing. Complications also arose on the distribution end. Still infuriated by the distributive mutilation that befell his previous film, the whopping Time Regained (and doubtless concerned that this might happen again), Ruiz pliantly struck a bargain with distributors for Klimt. He trimmed his original, 135-minute "director's cut" down to a 96-minute "producer's cut" for general consumption, which rendered much of the material less fluid and coherent. Both versions screened at the 2006 Rotterdam Film Festival. ~ Nathan Southern, Rovi
John Malkovich has virtually cornered the market on portraying aesthetes in the thrall of demonic visions. Klimt adds to his gallery of elegant monsters.
A good bio of any historical character has to have a compelling story, whether evil or good. Klimt appears to have had that story. I sure would have liked to know what it was.
Ruiz is terrific in evoking a heady atmosphere of ornate fin de siecle decadence, and Malkovich is ideally cast as a coolly intellectual, free-thinking, free-living aesthete...
Whatever its flaws may be (and, frankly, they are legion), Raoul Ruiz's latest film is a biopic that mixes and matches visual and narrative styles boldly, wildly, madly enough to invigorate the genre, but not enough to save the movie.
Imagining an artist's life as little more than a series of portentous set pieces, [director] Ruiz, who also wrote the script, has made a film that is neither portrait nor allegory but empty ornamentalism.
Ruiz is so intent on harnessing the painter to his own -- here, rather arid -- relativism that he never manages to convey the unfettered eros that brings crowds flocking to exhibitions of Klimt's work, even as critics hold their noses.
An almost unbearable collection of monologues with no regard for substantive or involving dialogue, the film sheds little or no light on the genius behind some extraordinary artwork.
"Klimt" starts in a hospital in Vienna in 1918 as both the First World War and the Austro-Hungarian Empire are coming to an end. Of all the beds occupied, only the one containing the dying artist Gustav Klimt(John Malkovich) is of interest to the viewer. In his delirium, he thinks back to 1900 and a fateful trip to
Paris. Written and directed by Raul Ruiz, "Klimt" is a return to the extreme stream of consciousness territory that he had previously visited with his adaptation of Proust's "Time Regained" which also featured John Malkovich. There are some nice touches with this movie such as the silent movie within a movie and the idea that Klimt represented the first breath of the 20th century in conflict against the dying 19th century. But by venturing too far into a house of mirrors, Ruiz fails to deliver anything of substance concerning the artist, nor is it anywhere near as erotic as it should have been.
October 25, 2008
Walter M.
Super Reviewer
i've never seen an art film that moves a mile a minute. well, it's not exactly an art film, but a film about art... there's plenty of pretense to make up for that though. still, anything that can help me get into the heads of artists i love is fantastic, so i found this pretty good if somewhat impenetrable in places.
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