Museum Hours

I left the theater in a sort of observational trance, and vowed to get to the Metropolitan Museum ASAP and back to Vienna as soon as I can.

I'll admit I'm kind of like the characters in the film. If you are a 13 year old boy whose favorite movie is The Transformers this might not be for you. Then again, you might learn something. There isn't much plot and there isn't much conflict but it isn't about plot or conflict. It's about art and life and to me it wasn't irritatingly slow at all and I wouldn't have cut a second. The pace and observational tone of the film are necessary to what it's about.

The two nonactor main character actors do a wonderful job. They aren't called on to do a lot off complex stuff, and maybe they wouldn't cut it as Martha and George, but they are perfect here.

The film has a lot to say about art and life, without being in any way didactic. The only part that I had the least impatience with was the scene with the somewhat annoying curator lecturing a group, although it did serve its purpose of making some points about the art while revealing a bit about the observers of art as well. There is also one scene that stands out in its sudden deviation from the flat observational realism of the rest of the film into a bit of symbolic surrealism but it's not without meaning either.

Most of the film is about quiet introspective moments. One scene that isn't is of Johann and Anne joining in with patrons at the bar drinking and dancing to ethnic music on Immigrant Night. (Really, I think that's what they called it). Later, thinking about Breugel's Peasant Wedding...

I have forgotten how an art movie looks like. I am satisfied with this movie. It is good to see a movie like this after some time, especially after I was busy with Oscar event and nominee movies. Although the art movie is not my type, sometimes I get bored for its slow presentation, but sometimes I will be thrilled to enjoy those great visuals.

Movies without commercial values are kinda bores me. Sometime intense scenes and inappropriate scenes turn me off. There are many people who love this rare form of the movie, but my interest in those movies depends on what it deals. This movie was about art museum, I like paintings and drawing so managed to enjoy it.

This movie was like a documentary about an art museum from Austria. They concentrated more on art pieces to explain behind story of those. They just added a couple of characters in the movie with a story to start and end about the beautiful Vienna museum. Yeah, it worked so well, human emotions plus great fine arts, totally an awesome blend.

If you ask me, I would say it is an another form of 'Before Sunrise'. The whole movie takes place between two characters, Anne and Johan. Mostly they talk largely about paintings and Vienna city. It is a kinda educational purpose where we can get information about the city and its history. You won't like it just after a watch, it will take time. Day by day you will begin like it more and more, that is how this movie is made up of.

It's hard to review a film this incredible, but I'll try.

MUSEUM HOURS looked like it might be kind of boring, but after watching, I can't see why any more or less adult person would not be intrigued by at least certain aspects of this film. Though pretty distractible, I was held spellbound from start to finish. Like most people, I generally like a strong plot-line with tension, surprises, and all of that. While MUSEUM HOURS has very solid character development and cohesion between its scenes, it just isn't a story-story and is one of those rare films that doesn't need much sequence of events. It's far less depressing than it may appear and actually quite funny in certain--naked people casually strolling the Kunsthistoriches, Johann's narration of missing strategic body parts on ancient sculptures--places.

This film is, of course, all about art imitating life and vice versa. But don't let that scare you off. It's totally lacking in pretense and plays no tricks with its audience, carrying the casual viewer along with it. If I'm making MUSEUM HOURS sound like stoner-food, I can only say that it's a drug of the very best kind. Brilliantly simple, without any of the obscurantist b.s. we often encounter in films of this sort.

There's a lot about Bruegel, one of the few painters who's ever meant much to me. Yet, even if Bruegel doesn't move you, other things in this film most likely will. A myriad of miscellaneous images, some "everyday," some "famous art": MUSEUM HOURS gives new insights into even the simplest, oft-ignored imagery. You'll never be able to look at another landscape--real, imagined, on canvas, whatever--in a cursory way again. Forgive me, but MUSEUM HOURS is truly mind-expanding.

The biggest reason why this film succeeds in being artsy without any of the negative connotations of that term is that it's narrated by Johann, a guard at the famous museum in Vienna who, though he's never been a particular fan of painting, has had much time to stare idly at the artwork--which, of course, includes the visitors and everything else around him--until it becomes so familiar that he notices new details and meanings with every view. Anne, the visitor from Montreal who likes art-in-general but is in Vienna mainly to visit her sister in the hospital, provides further perspectives in her conversations with Johann. There is also a very memorable five minutes with Gerda, amazingly keen in her descriptions but still friendly and open-minded with her tour group.

I don't give ten stars to many films, but anything less would be an injustice here. Though I'm sure that I'd EVENTUALLY grow tired of it, I could watch MUSEUM HOURS every night for quite a while.

Museum Hours

This film is not recommended.

"Lost in the dangling conversation, And the superficial sighs, In the borders of our lives." - Lyrics from Paul Simon's The Dangling Conversation

Jem Cohen's Museum Hours is a personal treatise about the impact of art upon our everyday lives. The film takes places mostly at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in modern day Vienna. Amid the Flemish and medieval art, somewhere between the Egyptian sculptures and the Bruegel paintings sits Johann (Bobby Sommer), a security guard enamored by his work who casually observes the museum's visiting population as he philosophically debates the direct correlation between art and life's mysteries. He befriends Anne (Mary Margaret O'Hara), a Canadian woman in town to see her comatose cousin at a nearby hospital. Their friendship and dangling superficial conversations make up the majority of the film.

No doubt this is a very personal film for Cohen, the director and screenwriter, but for this moviegoer, it never quite came together. Much of Museum Hours is heavy-handed and pretentious. Too much of the time, the filmmaker seems too fixated on his artfully composed photographic images of townsfolk and objects seen on Austrian streets. He captures the city life but sacrifices any semblance of plot. Cohen belabors his non-existent story with dull dialog and sketchy characters that rarely provide any sudden revelations or insight on this aesthetic debate. Filled with philosophical wordplay, Museum Hours is an intellectual film caught up in its artistic self-importance.

The actors have no real chemistry either. One doesn't really care about the characters as they are written. Their times together are not the least bit memorable. Throughout the film, I felt like one trapped in a conversation with a party guest who has nothing much to say. Where the film does succeed is in Johann's philosophical observations about art and its place in our world. He questions art's timeliness, its overt sexual and violent messages, and its ability to speak with us emotionally, no doubt strong ideas in search of a coherent story.

It's the storytelling that is sub-par and the film meanders as much as its camera-work and direction. Cohen goes off course much of the time with scenes of nude visitors roaming the galleries or showcasing a flea market with discarded items set against a voice-over from a museum's interactive audio tour, anything to create a direct connection to art and the world. And speaking of tours, for some reason, we leave the film's semi-plot to take in a 20 minute guided lecture about Bruegel's artistic contributions that becomes the centerpiece of the story, which is actually the film's best and most interesting scene. Museum Hours never makes much sense. It celebrates the visual arts but says very little about it. Just how many shots of blackbirds and pigeons and cold urban cityscapes can one take for the sake of art?

Excluding the gorgeous close-ups of the artwork, of which there are many, Museum Hours is about as exciting as watching old paint dry. GRADE: C

ANY COMMENTS: Please contact me at: jadepietro@rcn.com

"The real voyage of discovery lies in not seeing new landscapes but in having new eyes" - Marcel Proust

Jem Cohen's Museum Hours moves art beyond the confines of a stuffy museum and takes it out into the streets of Vienna where its profound observations make irrelevant the artificial distinction between art and life. Cohen widens our view of what is "inside" the museum to include what is "outside," not as a separate part of the experience but as an integrated whole. The film is narrated by Johann (Bobby Sommer), a soft-spoken museum guard at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna who, after spending his younger days traveling with rock bands, has worked at the museum for the past six years, getting to know each painting intimately. His favorite room is the Bruegel room where Flemish Renaissance painter Pieter Bruegel's depictions of 16th century peasant life touch him most deeply.

Having just arrived from Montreal to visit her cousin who is in a coma, Anne (Mary Margaret O'Hara) seeks advice from Johann about directions to the hospital. As the two talk about the city, they develop a friendship and he acts as her tour guide, escorting her to visit ancient and modern sites in Vienna. As the experience opens him to a renewed appreciation of the city and its history, the camera focuses its attention on city life in a way that allows us to notice details that we may have never seen before: young boys on skateboards in the park, an old woman walking up a hill flanked by red cars, the walls of an ancient church, abandoned beer cans on the sidewalk, the faces of pedestrians huddled in the cold waiting for a bus, the boarded-up storefront of a store, and the give and take of bargaining at a local flea market.

Johann and Anne also spend time in the hospital where they talk to Anne's cousin who cannot hear them. Johann describes in details some of the paintings of Rembrandt from memory "all very dark and wise-looking," while Anne sings her a lovely ballad. The narrative of the woman and her cousin develops slowly but the film is not about the story, but about observation and our connection with the world. One of the film's highlights is the discussion of Bruegel by the tour guide (Ela Piplits) talking to a group of eager visitors. According to the guide, in a time of political repression carried out by the Duke of Alba, Bruegel's paintings were radical, "more radical than they might seem."

Dressing as a peasant to immerse himself in the culture of the poorer classes, Bruegel's depiction of the masses was not judgmental but focused on the small details of peasant life. As the director puts it, "This man (Breugel) took a very close, careful look at how working people, peasants lived and did it without a sentimental overlay, but with a respectful interest in the details of their lives." Another moving part of Johann's narration is his story about one of his coworkers, an art student who is no longer at the museum. As Johann tells us, the kid, whom he calls a "Marxist punk," ridiculed the idea of a museum, saying it is all about money and that the still lifes of famous artists are the equivalent of piles of Rolex watches, champagne bottles, and flat-screen TVs.

Though Johann obviously disagrees with this assessment, he does not put the student down, dismiss his objections, or find the need to offer a defense. Museum Hours is a riveting experience that bonds us to a world of stillness, beyond the limits of our sense perception. The film helps us to see with new eyes, enabling us to move towards a deeper, more truthful experience of ourselves and the world, one in which a young black boy in a hoodie is as rare and beautiful as a Rembrandt.