Wednesday, January 9, 2008

Klimt Confusion



Chilean French expatriate director Raul Ruiz's film of Gustav Klimt is an odd and kaleidoscopic roller coaster ride with a center that does not hold long enough for the viewer to get any bearings at all.

John Malkovich is always interesting to watch when he gets a chance to play a tweaked out obsessive, but he seems lost in his frock coat with self absored dialog floating through series of soundstages and with time jumps throughout what appears to be the last ten years or so of Klimts life, but we can't be too sure.

I have learned to not dismiss out of hand as being bad if my dislike for something is strong at first taste. It took me multiple screenings to realize that Mean Streets was an artistic accomplishment of high order. Many musical artists I now revere and respect were not immediately appreciated. So when I read in Ruiz's imdb biography about his output of nearly 90 films where he described as "a poet of fantastic images whose films slip effortlessly from reality to imagination and back again. A manipulator of wild, intellectual games in which the rules are forever changing, Ruiz's techniques are as varied as film itself--a collection of odd Wellesian angles and close-ups, bewildering p.o.v. shots, dazzling colors, and labyrinthine narratives which weave and dodge the viewer's grasp with every shot." Additionally, the brief bio states that "Like Godard (whom Ruiz names as an early influence and who also owes a debt to B films), Ruiz makes no differentiation between the "high art" of Racine or Calderon and the "low art" of Roger Corman."

Yes, this sounds like someone I should be open to invesigating further. It makes sense how someone of John Malkovich's status would become attached with this project. At this point, very few of Ruiz's films are readily available. He sounds like a filmmaker that needs to be approached from an immersive perspective like Godard or Fassbinder. Hopefully someday he will be an Eclipse box set or will get the kind of comprehensive treatment that Kino gives Krzysztof Kieslowski or Wong Kar Wai.

I sure was dazzled with the brief clip from Ruiz's version of Proust I posted here on the bufffet last month and there are some images and sequences in Klimt that attracted my attention such as the fantastic scene where Klimt goes to Georges Melies' studio in hot pursuit of Lea de Castro and she is created as a shadow on the wall by Melies, (I'd like to know more about the real life Klimt/Melies connection) but I doubt I'll try a second round screening of Klimt until I have opportunity to try out other Ruiz works someday. When that will be, it is hard to say. There are lots of good B movies and other works that promise to entertain that are likely to attract my attention prior.
posted by well-executed buffet at 3:34 AM
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