Klimt & Schiele - Eros and Psyche

Klimt & Schiele - Eros and Psyche (2018) is a documentary directed by Michele Mally.

Many people know the name Gustav Klimt because he was a great painter, and because of the movie Woman in Gold (2015), starring Helen Mirren. Klimt's contemporary, Egon Schiele is not as well known.

The movie somehow tries to weave their art into a tapestry of their era. New names appear and disappear, and it's hard to understand how person A relates to person B, or C, or D.

More exasperating is that Klimt and Schiele were painters in the Art Nouveau style. The film uses the German term, Jugendstil, but never defines it.

Art Nouveau or Jugendstil was a major artistic movement from 1890 until WW I Klimt and Schiele were key players. I find it bizarre that this isn't made apparent anywhere in the movie.

This is a film worth seeing if you're interested in art, and, especially Art Nouveau. It's not a terrible film, but not a great one either.

We saw the movie at a special showing at Rochester's wonderful Little Theatre. Because it's about art, it will work better on a large screen than on a small screen. Klimt and Schiele were great artists. I wish director Mally had made a great film about them.

This documentary is so ridiculous that I can barely finish it. Despite me being very interested in learning more about Klimt and Schiele, and the era in which they lived, the attempt to try to make the film in itself a kind of "art work" just turned out so bad. I want to see a film about the artists in the title, not actors wanting all the attention on them while trying to look pensive and profound. I mean, things like Lorenzo Richelmy talking into a mirror just come off as so insipid. What did they think my reaction as a viewer would be? "Wow, he's so cool and mysterious?" These kinds of amateur artistic endeavors just take the focus off the subject of the documentary, and off a narrative that is already slightly chaotic and off-focus.

If you want to educate yourself about Sigmund Freud, Vienna's composers and their graves, Vienna's photographers, Vienna's kitchenware designers, Vienna tramway structure, Vienna waltzes balls, Vienna culinary delights, Vienna's participation in World War I etc., watch this pathetic and very unsuccessful attempt. All of the above mentioned musings take about 70% of this... uhm, strange documentary. If you want to know something about Klimt and Schiele please avoid these unprofessional attempt, otherwise please find some other way to entertain yourself rather than watching this disaster.