Synopsis
A security guard working at an art museum in Vienna crosses paths with a Canadian woman in town to visit her ailing cousin.
A security guard working at an art museum in Vienna crosses paths with a Canadian woman in town to visit her ailing cousin.
Часове в музея, 뮤지엄 아워스, Музейные часы, Ziyaret Saatleri, 博物馆时光
Moving relationship stories Humanity and the world around us Faith and religion Relationship comedy Emotional life of renowned artists Captivating relationships and charming romance Emotional LGBTQ relationships Surreal and thought-provoking visions of life and death Powerful stories of heartbreak and suffering Show All…
what i love about this is you can tell jem cohen believes people are art too, if not more so. there is so much to learn from studying a face. and really, so much of art is trying to replicate or share the feeling that a person gave you. no painting or sculpture would exist without someone that studied a face, or listened to another person tell a story. we’re all so swirled up in the things that influence us, the people that exist among us, and the places we inhabit, that it’s impossible to label any one thing as art. and each of us have these people that we want to observe for hours & want to know that we can return to them. and then maybe one day, we will figure out a way to honor them through some medium. and others can see all the details of their faces too.
One of those quiet films that just stares at the world, which is kinda how I always feel in a museum (an art museum, I mean; in the insectarium, I just feel creeped out). A soft, warm view of a friendship being built; I especially loved how the guard noted that he was rediscovering his own city (I always feel reinvigorated about New Orleans when I get to show it to someone new).
"i've had my share of loud, and now i have my share of quiet."
Jem Cohen's "narrative" debut is the rare film that actually qualifies as a "meditation." a wonderfully quiet study of art & infinity w/ hints of Hollis Frampton. agree with calum marsh's assessment that this is as much of an essay film as it is anything else, but on exactly what... well, the endless array of focal points is part of its charm.
"But what is it about some people that makes one curious, while with others one would be just as happy to never know a thing about them?"
Anne (Mary Margaret O'Hara) makes the journey to Vienna to see a comatose cousin she doesn't know particularly well, but who has no one else in the world. She finds herself a stranger in an unfamiliar city, lonely and adrift, until she meets Johann (Bobby Sommer), an aging, equally lonesome museum guard. The two find the companionship in one another their lives have been lacking, if only for awhile.
Well, this can safely be added to the list of films I love that I can't recommend to many people! Museum Hours is a…
It's hard to imagine there's that many left who still believe that Standards Must Be Maintained In The Arts, and that patrolling a high/low divide is either possible or desirable. And yet there are people who find High Culture intimidating/elitist/etc., and believe in a mythical straw/boogeyman living in such rarefied circumstances that the slightest sound of electric guitar distortion or the merest TV reference or et al. would set bluehairs' eyebrows raised a whole two inches, which is why it's OK to be pre-emptively dismissive and not even engage with anything smacking of culture. All of which is ridiculous.
First shot has museum guard Bobby Sommers sitting placidly, roped-off behind a gallery, decidedly calm despite the faint rockin' ruckus seemingly…
Before Sunrise meets Lost in Translation meets art history meets digital art meets a cold, snowy November evening.
It's beautiful.
38/100
For, you see, life itself is a museum, and it's always open.
GACK.
This isn't the kind of movie I take any pleasure in belittling, so I'll keep this brief. Basically it played to me like a feature-length extension of American Beauty's swirling plastic bag...which I know was lifted from a Dorsky short (that I haven't seen), but Museum Hours felt much more like Hollywood's cloying appropriation of it. Mostly, I just think I'm not philosophically in tune with Cohen's project here. If everything is interesting and worthy of attention, as he insists, then nothing is, I would argue.
"Some of the oldest stuff looks the most modern." Two people in stasis as the dead things around them are brought back to life through editing both symbolic and simply evocative. As they drift around listlessly waiting for death (of others, and maybe of selves), the art finds new relevance, clarifying the present and, in some cases, looking toward the future. Like FILM SOCIALISME's postmodern tour of history, COLOR WHEEL's throwback 16mm, CERTIFIED COPY's spin on Rossellini, and UNCLE BOONMEE's national history-as-film history slideshow, somehow the most exciting and progressive films of the new decade are the ones most tied to the past.
Letterboxd Season Challenge: Week 2 — Independent Spirit John Cassavetes Award Week
It only makes sense that such a reflective and earnest film would stand in opposition to hacks like Mike D'Angelo who seek dragged up subversion, looking at film with broad and ugly bullet points to which the point he reaches is some smug reiteration of cinema's priorities needing to be honed in and wrangled like his cat when he tries to show it affection. And frankly, I think that's a philosophy dead set on stubbornness. I don't think that beauty always reaches the more humble critical minds, certainly I've missed the train on loving a few films of this sort, but it most definitely excludes people like him.…
Actually soooo stunning in every way. Very real in a way I don’t know that I’ve ever seen before. Of course some lovely stuff on being a foreigner completed isolated in a new place, constantly swinging between tightening and loosening a grip on why they even came to this strange place at all. And I love that we get to see this convergence of two people who delve into and cherish every bit of the beautiful or interesting parts of their day, even if they’re insignificant or hard to articulate. And if you look further you can see the same behavior from the filmmaker. The collection of shots between Anne’s and Johann’s daily lives seem to be wherever the filmmaker’s eyes…
Director Jem Cohen gently lifts the frame from the easel, out of the gallery and into the city of Vienna to create a transformative view of the everyday world around us. Cohen has been a documentary filmmaker for the vast majority of his career and whilst Museum Hours marks a move away from that foundation, he uses a number of those aesthetics to probe our imagination around a light and affective narrative.
Johann (Bobby Sommer), a guard at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, enjoys his days working next to the many paintings hanging in the galleries. After many years working on the road as a rock group manager he welcomes the solace and solitude found in the presence of the…