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Klimt (2006)
Director: Raúl Ruiz
Movie review
From Time Out New York
Those who marveled at Raúl Ruiz’s 1999 film, Time Regained—a superb adaptation of the last volume of Proust’s In Search of Lost Time that featured a fantastically fey John Malkovich as the Baron de Charlus—will be baffled by the latest collaboration between the director and actor. This inert biopic of the Austrian Symbolist painter, best known for The Kiss and other gold-flecked canvases of women in various states of undress, makes all the mistakes that Time Regained—which roughly covers the same era as Klimt—avoided.
Period detail, even the mounds of frippery required for a movie set during the belle epoque, need not bog down a film. Yet Malkovich’s starchy, affected portrayal of the libidinal artist reeks of embalming fluid. He’s not helped by the supporting cast, either: Saffron Burrows’s shimmying model coos, “Here in France, nudité is no longer comme il faut”; Nikolai Kinski mincingly plays Egon Schiele as a giggling Peter Lorre. “It’s not a portrait—it’s an allegory,” Klimt sniffs to one philistine about his latest work. Imagining an artist’s life as little more than a series of portentous set pieces, Ruiz, who also wrote the script, has made a film that is neither portrait nor allegory but empty ornamentalism.
Author: Melissa Anderson
Time Out New York Issue 629: October 18-24, 2007
User reviews of this film
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- Alison Blazeby said...
- Posted on Oct 26 2007 19:54 Couldn't make head or tail of this film, sadly, as I have always admired the work of Klimt and was hoping to find out more about his life.
- Report as inappropriate
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- David Garcia said...
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Posted on Sep 03 2007 18:29
Despite the high number of beatifully naked women, Klimt is two hours of pretentious nonsense. The director was unable to build a coherent narrative, although it seems that it was not his intention from the very beginning. The beauty of some of the dreamlike images used throughout the film cannot detract from the appalling plotline, or lack of it.
However, this film could come in useful if you've taken too much acid and want to hide in a refuge where you will feel that your hallucinations and inability to make sense of anything will feel totally normal.
Unfortunately the director's art doesn't match the quality of the art of the protagonist of the film. - Report as inappropriate
Cast & crew
Director: Raúl Ruiz
Cast: John Malkovich, Veronica Ferres, Saffron Burrows, Stephen Dillane, Paul Hilton full cast
Genre(s): Drama
Rated: NR
Duration: 131 mins
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