Museum Hours (2013)
Average Rating: 7.8/10
Reviews Counted: 51
Fresh: 47 | Rotten: 4
Its languid pace may frustrate some viewers, but for patient filmgoers, Museum Hours offers a carefully observed portrait of the human condition.
Average Rating: 7.8/10
Critic Reviews: 16
Fresh: 14 | Rotten: 2
Its languid pace may frustrate some viewers, but for patient filmgoers, Museum Hours offers a carefully observed portrait of the human condition.
liked it
Average Rating: 3.3/5
User Ratings: 963
Movie Info
Acclaimed filmmaker Jem Cohen's new feature, "Museum Hours", is a mesmerizing tale of two adrift strangers who find refuge in Vienna's grand Kunsthistorisches Art Museum. Johann, a museum guard, spends his days silently observing both the art and the visitors. Anne, suddenly called to Vienna from overseas, has been wandering the city in a state of limbo. A chance meeting sparks a deepening connection that draws them through the halls of the museum and the streets of the city. The exquisitely
Cast
-
Mary Margaret O'Hara
Anne -
Bobby Sommer
Johann -
Ela Piplits
Gerda Pachner
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All Critics (51) | Top Critics (16) | Fresh (47) | Rotten (4)
It has its tedium, but it's not bad. At times, it's actually quite good.
Top CriticCohen's spare but spectacularly visualized film follows a pair of middle-aged strangers who meet in a Viennese art museum and proceed to walk and talk.
Its encouragement to let ourselves be captivated by everyday humanity as well as the old masters is both richly illuminating and quirkily endearing.
An enthralling and sometimes droll meditation on life, art and mortality, not to mention Internet porn and its influence on modern art.
"Museum Hours" is every bit as masterfully conceived and executed as the art works that serve as the film's lively cast of supporting characters.
Difficult to describe but not to enjoy.
As we learn how to look at the Kunsthistorisches' masterpieces, we're also learning how to watch this movie. ... And better: we're learning how to look at our lives.
Museum Hours is one of those artsy-fartsy meditations on life that you see sometimes in the better cinemas. The good news is it turns out to be more artsy than fartsy: There's plenty to think about here.
Calm entertainment.
Most successful at its most hushed and explicitly 'artful,' in the museum; less interesting when it becomes more casual, as when Johann and Mary hang out and discuss general topics at coffeehouses. (Mary is nice, but, frankly, a bit of a bore.)
A contemplative experimental drama, it also invites moviegoers to take a deep breath, to relax, and to float along in its leisurely exploration of leisurely exploration.
Critics have been more than kind to Museum Hours, respectful of its sleepy intellectualism in a 2013 summer of brainless action flicks.
The result is an experience not unlike going to a museum itself: a chance to peruse wondrous things in a sacred space. For an evening, a movie theater becomes a place where art and life become beautifully entangled.
The reward is an intelligent, observant effort that extracts a purity of existence from the nuances of art and enjoys the beauty of human connection.
Quite literally an art film, this quietly riveting drama essentially just observes its settings and characters, eavesdropping on what they have to say about themselves and the world around them.
What should have been a beautiful, contemplative piece of art, ends up being a self-indulgent bore. You'd be much better off going to your local art museum than sitting through this reject of an art film.
It's an odd duck, but it rewards moviegoers willing to fall under its spell.
Whether you find the result tedious or enlightening will be a factor of your openness to the director's languidly atmospheric approach.
A little bit like a travelogue, a little bit like people-watching, this is simultaneously a relaxing and invigorating cinematic experience. Simply magnificent.
A beguiling and often moving treatise on the relationship between art and life.
Museum Hours is melancholy yet full of humour; educational and entertaining.
It sits uncomfortably as a weird in-between facsimile, as though we're being asked to study postcard reproductions of great artworks.
This is one of those rare films that may change the way you view the world.
Museum Hours is a grand, profound and exceptionally beautiful love letter to museums and the wealth of culture that can be found in everyday life.
Audience Reviews for Museum Hours
Super Reviewer
What little we have here concerns Johann(Bobby Sommer), once a road manager for bands, who now works as a security guard in the fine arts museum in Vienna. In his spare time, he listens to AC/DC and plays online poker. That leaves plenty of time to hang out with Anne(Mary Margaret O'Hara) who is in town from Montreal to care for an ailing relative in a coma. Since she has little money, their options are limited. But getting her a museum pass proves to be little trouble.
But the movie gets bored with that, going off on random tangents and even throwing in a few naked bodies at one point to see if anybody is even paying attention anymore, much less still have a pulse.
Super Reviewer
Discussion Forum
| Topic | Last Post | Replies |
|---|---|---|
| Mind Blowingly Boring! | 2 months ago | 0 |
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