''Klimt'' is a 2006 Austrian

art-house An art film (or arthouse film) is typically an independent film, aimed at a niche market rather than a mass market audience. It is "intended to be a serious, artistic work, often experimental and not designed for mass appeal", "made primarily f ...

biographical film A biographical film or biopic () is a film that dramatizes the life of a non-fictional or historically-based person or people. Such films show the life of a historical person and the central character's real name is used. They differ from docudra ...

about the life of the Austrian

Symbolist Symbolism was a late 19th-century art movement of French and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts seeking to represent absolute truths symbolically through language and metaphorical images, mainly as a reaction against naturalism and realis ...

painter

Gustav Klimt Gustav Klimt (July 14, 1862 – February 6, 1918) was an Austrian symbolist painter and one of the most prominent members of the Vienna Secession movement. Klimt is noted for his paintings, murals, sketches, and other objets d'art. Klimt's prim ...

(1862–1918).''This means nothing to me'' Landesman, Cosmo. Sunday Times 3 June 2007 It was written and directed by Chilean filmmaker Raúl Ruiz, with an English screenplay adaptation by

Gilbert Adair Gilbert Adair (29 December 19448 December 2011) was a Scottish novelist, poet, film critic, and journalist.Stuart Jeffries and Ronald BerganObituary: Gilbert Adair ''The Guardian'', 9 December 2011. He was critically most famous for the "fiend ...

. The director of photography was

Ricardo Aronovich Ricardo Aronovich (born January 3, 1930, in Buenos Aires) is an Argentinean cinematographer known for his work for directors such as Hugo Santiago, Costa-Gavras, Ettore Scola and Raúl Ruiz. Filmography * '' The Guns'' (1964) * '' The Obse ...

, and the music was composed by

Jorge Arriagada Jorge Arriagada (born 1943) is a Chilean film composer. He is perhaps best known for his long-term collaboration with director Raúl Ruiz (director), Raúl Ruiz. He has also worked with directors Patricio Guzman, Barbet Schroeder and Olivier Assay ...

. The title role is played by

John Malkovich John Malkovich (born December 9, 1953) is an American actor. He is the recipient of several accolades, including a Primetime Emmy Award, in addition to nominations for two Academy Awards, a British Academy Film Award, two Screen Actors Guild Aw ...

and the cast includes

Stephen Dillane Stephen John Dillane (; born 27 March 1957) is a British actor. He is best known for his roles as Leonard Woolf in the 2002 film '' The Hours'', Stannis Baratheon in ''Game of Thrones'', and Thomas Jefferson in the 2008 HBO miniseries ''John Ada ...

. Both a 130-minute-long

director's cut A director's cut is an edited version of a film (or video game, television episode, music video, or commercial) that is supposed to represent the director's own approved edit in contrast to the theatrical release. "Cut" explicitly refers to the ...

and a shortened producer's cut of 96 minutes were shown at the 2006

Berlin Film Festival The Berlin International Film Festival (german: Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin), usually called the Berlinale (), is a major international film festival held annually in Berlin, Germany. Founded in 1951 and originally run in June, the festi ...

. A few months later the film was shown at the

28th Moscow International Film Festival The 28th Moscow International Film Festival was held from 23 June to 2 July 2006. The Golden George was awarded to the Swedish film '' About Sara'' directed by Othman Karim. Jury * Andrzej Żuławski (Poland – Head of the Jury) * Alexei Uchite ...

where it was nominated for two awards, winning the ''Russian Film Clubs Federation Award''.

Plot

This art house film is presented in the format of a sequence of nearly two dozen often disassociated vignettes taken from the life of Gustav Klimt and visualized by him in his recollection. All of this occurs while he is being treated late in life in hospital using mercury treatments for advanced

syphilis Syphilis () is a sexually transmitted infection caused by the bacterium ''Treponema pallidum'' subspecies ''pallidum''. The signs and symptoms of syphilis vary depending in which of the four stages it presents (primary, secondary, latent, an ...

which he had contracted earlier in his life. In his advanced age, Klimt has become a leading artist in Vienna and his work is celebrated at all level of society in Austria. Throughout his life, Klimt has had a special interest in the depiction of the beauty he associates with the female form and his studio is constantly occupied by nude models posing for his drawings and oil paintings. Klimt is open minded as to the expression of his own sexuality and casually forms relationships of an intimate nature with many of his models. A number of his models bear his children, and Klimt's visualized recollections of his younger years showing him as being aware of having fathered many children, some of whose identities he knows and some of which are nearly anonymous to him. In one visit to a local brothel with a male acquaintance, an older Klimt is introduced to one of the prostitutes as actually being his daughter, fathered during his visits to the brothel as a younger man. When his acquaintance asks him if this is true, Klimt casually says he does not know and the two men continue their evening of indulgence. A recurrent figure in the visualized vignettes which Klimt experiences while receiving mercury treatment in hospital, is an unnamed government official who seems to obtain commissions from the Ministry of Culture for Klimt. When a three panel order is made for three large canvases, Klimt paints them and they are displayed with a large government reception. The reception is mixed as to the assessment of the quality of the works of art, though Klimt is accepted as an artist of stature to be respected by both higher and lower officials. During the vignettes, his fellow Austrian artist

Egon Schiele Egon Leo Adolf Ludwig Schiele (; 12 June 1890 – 31 October 1918) was an Austrian Expressionist painter. His work is noted for its intensity and its raw sexuality, and for the many self-portraits the artist produced, including nude self-portr ...

also visits Klimt at various points in his life during Klimt's visualized segments of his life while his mercury treatment is continued. Klimt's two main love affairs are with his friend from Austria, Emilie Floege, and an actress, Lea de Castro, from Paris, both of whom he often depicts in his art works. He is strongly attracted to both models for their presentation of the beauty of the female form and at one point even proposes marriage to his favorite Emilie so long as the marriage be an

open marriage Open marriage is a form of non-monogamy in which the partners of a dyadic marriage agree that each may engage in extramarital sexual relationships, without this being regarded by them as infidelity, and consider or establish an open relatio ...

. In one of the vignettes, Klimt is pictured with his mother and sister, both of whom are under care in an asylum for the mentally ill, and they confront him with questions about the illegitimate children he is rumored to have fathered. Klimt again states that he does not know how many children he has fathered or the general whereabouts of his progeny. As Klimt reaches the final stages of his mercury treatment, he expires during the treatment, his last recollections being about the beauty of his art rather than any of the moral ascriptions made concerning his lifetime which all appear to have been secondary to him in comparison to the importance he associated with his career as an artist.

Cast

Veronica Ferres Veronica Maria Cäcilia Ferres (; born 10 June 1965) is a German film, television, and stage actress. Her 2007 portrayal of Sara Bender in ''Die Frau vom Checkpoint Charlie'', based on the true story of Jutta Fleck, earned her the award for Be ...

as Emilie "Midi" Floege *

as Secretary *

Saffron Burrows Saffron Domini Burrows (born 22 October 1972) is an English actress and model who has appeared in films such as '' Circle of Friends,'' ''Wing Commander,'' '' Deep Blue Sea,'' ''Gangster No. 1,'' ''Enigma,'' ''Troy,'' ''Reign Over Me'' and ''The ...

as Lea de Castro (based on

Cléo de Mérode Cléopâtre-Diane de Mérode (27 September 1875 – 17 October 1966) was a French dancer of the Belle Époque. She has been referred to as the "first real celebrity icon" and the "first modern celebrity". She was also the first woman whose photog ...

) *

Sandra Ceccarelli Sandra Ceccarelli (born 3 July 1967) is an Italian film actress. Daughter of Franco Ceccarelli, guitarist of the 1960s and 1970s Italian rock group Equipe 84, and Sandra von Glasersfeld (daughter of philosopher Ernst von Glasersfeld), Ceccarel ...

Serena Lederer Serena (Szeréna) Pulitzer Lederer (20 May 1867 in – 27 March 1943 ) was an Austro-Hungarian art collector and the spouse of the industrial magnate August Lederer, close friend of Gustav Klimt and instrumental in the constitution of the collect ...

Nikolai Kinski Nanhoï Nikolai Kinski (born July 30, 1976) is a French-American film actor, who has also done work in television and on stage. He was born in Paris, and grew up in California. Currently residing in Berlin, he has acted primarily in American and ...

Aglaia Szyszkowitz Aglaia Szyszkowitz (born 11 January 1968) is an Austrian actress. She has appeared in more than seventy films since 1995. Filmography Film References External links * 1968 births Living people Austrian film actresses {{Aus ...

as Mizzi *

Joachim Bißmeier Joachim Bißmeier (born 22 November 1936 in Bonn, Germany) is a German actor An actor or actress is a person who portrays a character in a performance. The actor performs "in the flesh" in the traditional medium of the theatre or in modern ...

as Hugo Moritz *

Ernst Stötzner Ernst Stötzner (born 1952) is a German actor. He has appeared in more than sixty films since 1983. Selected filmography References External links * 1952 births Living people German male film actors {{Germany-actor-stub ...

as Minister Hartl * Paul Hilton as Duke Octave *

Annemarie Düringer Annemarie Düringer (26 November 1925 – 26 November 2014) was a Swiss actress. She was born in Arlesheim, Basel-Landschaft. The daughter of a Swiss industrialist, she graduated from Cours Simon, Paris in 1946, and from the Max Reinhardt Semi ...

as Anna Finster Klimt * Irina Wanka as Berta Zuckerkandl * Klaus Ofczarek as Old Waiter

Critical response

Philip French Philip Neville French Order of the British Empire, OBE (28 August 1933 – 27 October 2015) was an English film critic and radio producer. French began his career in journalism in the late 1950s, before eventually becoming a BBC Radio prod ...

, in ''

The Observer ''The Observer'' is a British newspaper published on Sundays. It is a sister paper to ''The Guardian'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', whose parent company Guardian Media Group Limited acquired it in 1993. First published in 1791, it is the w ...

'' described the film as calculatedly enigmatic. Cosmo Landesman, in ''

The Sunday Times ''The Sunday Times'' is a British newspaper whose circulation makes it the largest in Britain's quality press market category. It was founded in 1821 as ''The New Observer''. It is published by Times Newspapers Ltd, a subsidiary of News UK, whi ...

'', described the film as "frigid and silly" being unnecessarily difficult to follow in the style of

Stanley Kubrick Stanley Kubrick (; July 26, 1928 – March 7, 1999) was an American film director, producer, screenwriter, and photographer. Widely considered one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, his films, almost all of which are adaptations of nove ...

's ''

Eyes Wide Shut ''Eyes Wide Shut'' is a 1999 erotic mystery psychological drama film directed, produced, and co-written by Stanley Kubrick. It is based on the 1926 novella '' Traumnovelle'' (''Dream Story'') by Arthur Schnitzler, transferring the story's sett ...

''. On review aggregation website

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

, ''Klimt'' holds an approval rating of 32% based on 25 reviews, with an average rating of 5.04/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "''Klimt'' is handsomely filmed, but the blurred storyline and substandard performances prove its undoing." On

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...

, the film has a

weighted average The weighted arithmetic mean is similar to an ordinary arithmetic mean (the most common type of average), except that instead of each of the data points contributing equally to the final average, some data points contribute more than others. The ...

score of 44 out of 100, based on 7 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Klimt (Film) 2006 films 2000s French-language films 2000s German-language films 2000s psychological drama films Biographical films about painters Films about schizophrenia Films about syphilis Films directed by Raúl Ruiz Films set in the 19th century Films set in the 1900s Films set in the 1910s Films set in Vienna Films shot in Cologne Films shot in Vienna Austrian biographical drama films British biographical drama films French biographical drama films German biographical drama films English-language Austrian films English-language French films English-language German films Gustav Klimt 2006 drama films 2000s British films 2000s French films 2000s German films

Plot

Cast

Critical response

Further reading

References

External links