Que viva Eisenstein!

Ordinarily I can take Peter Greenaway or leave him alone -- chiefly the latter. But he really scores this time with a story that has longed to be told.

As is known Sergei Eisenstein hoped to work in Hollywood in the early thirties just as sound came in. But thanks to aright-wing campaign (plus its own lack of imagination) Paramount Pictures was scared off from making films of with of the scripts the great Russian director had written : an adaptation of Dreiser's "An American Tragedy" and an original historical drama "Sutter's Gold." The novelist Upton Sinclair stepped in and elected to back a film Eisenstein wanted to make about Mexico. But he knew nothing about film production and less about Eisenstein's highly improvisatory working methods. Under-budgeted and best by problems the shoot was brought to a halt when Sinclair's brother-in-law, Hunter Kimbrough discovered SME was having too much fun south of the border. Moreover he got a gander at the great man's cache of frankly gay pornographic drawings. Eisenstein not only never got to edit "Que Viva Mexico" -- he never even saw the rushes. He returned to Russia where he made "Alexander Nevsky" and "Ivam the Terrible" Sinclair meanwhile had the "Que Viva Mexico" footage sliced and diced into travelogues.

This is the backdrop of what Greenaway has done which s to present Eisenstein's Mexican sojourn as a sexual awakening. He falls madly in love (and lust) with a handsome guide. Greenaway brings the full bore of his visual imagination to telling this tale with multiple images and lighting the likes of which hasn't been seen since Sternberg. Elmer Back is superb as SME and Luis Alberti is equally great as his love interest. Not to be missed.

I have not seen any of Greenaway's previous movies, and while I have seen Potemkin, I barley knew anything about (the actual) Eisenstein going in.

What I loved about this movie: The editing is fantastic. It plays around with the format, having real life photos of the characters and the locations next to characters as they are mentioned, playing with angles and positions of the characters, experimenting with colors, and obviously, using montages in a great way. I hope this is all based on Eisenstein's actual writings about the subject, as it is clear that he has thoughts about what movies can do with these tools.

That's the one positive thing I have to say about this movie. The characters are stylized into cartoon characters, and the dialog is boring and unengaging. The actual storyline is very forgettable. Greenaway chose to have the movie focus on Eisenstein's experiences in Mexico, but did not include any of the actual movie-making Eisenstein did there. To me, that would have been a more interesting movie - but I can understand that Greenaway had a different vision for this story.

The sexual scenes were graphical, but not grotesque or provoking (unless you are provoked by homosexuality).

Peter Greenaway's career is beyond any ambitions of commercial success - his most successful (audience-wise) movies were made in the 80s. Even then the combination of colors and music, architecture (he is an architect by formation) and composition, his obsessions for sex and death and his bluntness in approaching them were much out of the beaten track. For the last two decades his projects became more and more exploratory, with the moving images being only one of the tools in combinations of multi-disciplinary explorations and experiments that brought together almost every artistic discipline that was invented. Eisenstein in Guanajuato can be seen almost as a return to the more conventional tools of film making. It has a story, and it has a hero and it has a theme, one of these themes film makers love to bring to screen, maybe the ultimate film theme - film making!

If you listen to what Peter Greenaway has to tell about his film (and he speaks a lot as he promotes the film in the international festival tour) Eisentein in Guanajuato is before all a homage to one of the greatest directors in the history of cinema who was Sergei Eisenstein. It also is a social and political commentary, as it deals with what was probably the most exuberant, liberal and care-free period in the life of the screen director of the Soviet Revolution, and also with the sexual orientation of Eisenstein which was kind of a well known secret in his biography, tolerated by the Soviet authorities but maybe also a tool of blackmail by the KGB. The period spent by Eisenstein in Mexico while shooting material never gathered and edited for a film about the country and its revolutions may have been the happiest time in the life of the director already famous for Potemkin and October. It allowed him not only a unique encounter with a culture that was so different from some aspects yet so close from other compared with the Russian culture he knew from home, but also an encounter with himself, with his own demons, his self-denied homosexuality, his tendency to the luxury and the decadence of the bourgeois life, so different from the austerity he left in the Soviet Russia and to which he was condemned to return.

There is almost nothing in this film about Eisenstein's film making. At no point does he shout 'Camera!' or 'Action!' - at some moment he even refuses to do so. Peter Greenaway does not try to expose any secrets of the film making art of Eisenstein, but rather deals with the surrounding context that made his films possible. Finnish actor Elmer Bäck brings on screen an Eisenstein who hides his doubts behind exuberance, and his fears behinds carelessness, who is sure of his artistic genius but unaware about his personal charisma. Mexican actor Luis Alberti builds a fine counterpoint to Eisenstein's character and a credible gay love interest. The camera work does not try to replicate anything that Eisenstein has done on screen, but rather quotes and incorporates fragments of Eisentein's movies with the visual commentaries of Greenaway. I read some critical opinions about viewers 'getting tired' by the too intense camera work - I do not agree with them. When what you see on screen is expressive and interesting you cannot get tired, as one does not get tired of seeing more masterpieces in an art museum, or of listening to fine opera or classical music. Sets are as exuberant and as complex as an architect mind like Greenaway's can conceive. Overall Eisenstein in Guanajuato was for me a very satisfying and surprisingly entertaining experience.

I've met Greenaway several times. Worked on one of his a projects in a tangential way. His work in the 1980's was without par and quite a bit of his work since is still excellent, although 8 1/2, Pillow don't reach his prior levels -- and Guanajuato in my view is a mess. I can't recommend enough seeing Nightwatching and then J'Accuse if you want to really delve into a stunning view by one artist of another. I am very much looking forward to Greenaway's treatment of Brancusi, who he has referenced in several films, and not looking forward to the Eisenstein sequel set in Switzerland and the US.

On the film itself I guess the problem is that it neither looks at Eisenstein's work nor brings him to life. Greenway has done hagiographies of a dozen artists, but it gets a bit more uncomfortable with Eisenstein knowing he worked closely with Stalin (not Lenin who was long gone when this film is set) at destroying other artists. We know form recently opened soviet archives that Eisenstein had a side that was a nasty piece of work, promoting himself as a functionary of totalitarianism. And yes we now know that Eisenstein was the consummate sycophant to Stalin in "Ten Days.." essentially overseeing a Goebbels/Riefenstahl-like reinterpretation of the Russian revolution to write in Stalin above Trotsky, Zinoviev and perversely put him on par with Lenin.

Lets not forget that Eisenstein doggedly worked to mock the moderate revolutionary democratic socialists like Alexander Kerensky while slavishly celebrating an enabling Stalin who turned out to be the biggest mass murderer and oppressor in human history. I can't figure out if Greenaway was being ironic in proffering up the scene with the Soviet flag being planted in Eisenstein's bleeding orifice.

I would recommend every Greenaway film except this.

I read the reviews for this film by the other writers here and some are so spot on and well informed I feel a bit intimidated writing this short review. This film by Director/writer: Peter Greenaway is spellbinding, modern, surreal, and above all, as other writers expressed, captures the inner spirit of Eisenstein's genius.

Just as Guanajuato is geographically located in the center of Mexico this story is focused on Eisenstein discovering his personal center. He wanted to be accepted by Hollywood and they rejected him. In Soviet Russia he glorified the revolution with his film "October" and everyone saw him as an artist but he had to hide the person the artist is. He was a great artist of the cinema but here in Guanajuato Eisenstein finds himself and realizes he doesn't need the approval of his peers to be the person he is. With the companionship of his Mexican guide 'Palomino', performed so wonderfully by Luis Alberti, Eisenstein gives into his own desires, his own needs, and is given the chance (though briefly) to be himself physically, artistically, and intellectually.

If anyone wants to see the art of Eisenstein just find one of his movies and you will be stunned by it's grand yet simple photography and story. If you want to see an element of 'the man' that created these remarkable films catch this movie. Here the artist brakes the shackles others have place upon him. But in the end he must return to Soviet Russia and back to judging eyes that are so symbolically shown throughout the movie by the three Mexican men in traditional dress. They represent the establishment, society, they eyes and minds that judge all who try to be who they really are.

Great cinema for the thinking person!