MUSEUM HOURS

There is very little plot in this intriguing wee movie from writer/director Jem Cohen although it is billed as a drama. Essentially it is this. Anne, a middle-aged Canadian woman, rushes off to Vienna after she gets a call that a distant cousin of hers who has no other family is in a coma.  In between her daily visits to the hospital to kill time she takes to visiting the grand Kunsthistorisches Art Museum and befriends Johann one of the guards there.  The two form an easy non-sexual friendship after he offers his services as a translator and local guide. 

We learn very little about the pair beyond the fact that Anne has very little money as she only works occasionally, but nothing else is revealed about her obviously lonely life. Johann we discover went from being a Road Manager for a Rock Group, to teaching woodwork in a school, to ending up in his quietest job to date ostensibly guarding the art but in reality just observing the visitors.

The movie, like the Museum itself, centers around the famous Bruegel room which has the largest collection of his work in the world.  As we listen to the conversations between Anne and Johann, and to the words of an Expert Guide, the movie evolves into an Art History Lecture of sorts.  As they talk, Cohen's cameras dart from one minute detail to another examining the often overlooked facets of Bruegels multi-layered pieces. It is quite an eyeful ..... and a visual treat .... but at the same time it leaves you up in the air wondering if you are indeed watching an Open University Lesson or an episode of the Discovery Channel on TV.

I still cannot decide what to make of this docu-drama and hybrid American/Austrian movie. It was shot in the winter, when Vienna looked very cold and bleak and most uninviting. And as for the cast .... Anne was played by Mary Margaret O'Hara a Canadian singer/songwriter and occasional actress, Johann was played by Bobby Summer a non-professional actor BUT the Museum that the movie was based in and around was very much the real McCoy.  It, and the art, took their starring roles very seriously.  

This is one for dedicated cinephiles and/or art history buffs .....currently showing in selected US theaters, but you may want to wait for it on DVD as it is a tad too long and you will want to have your remote in your hand!

★★★★★★

THE END OF LOVE

Actor turned screenwriter/director Mark Webber's somewhat overly ambitious wee film is a piece of faction. He has melded parts of his own life and used his own 4 year old son as his co-star and embroiled a piece of 'what's the worst thing that can happen to me' scenario into an uncomfortable narrative.

The premise of the story is that Webber is a struggling bit-part actor in Hollywood, totally broke, and is a single parent to his four year old son Isaac after the boy's mother was killed in an accident.  (In real life the actress Frankie Shaw, Isaac's mother had separated from Webber).  Trying to deal with his own grief he totes the kid around on auditions and centers his whole day around him. There is never any doubt that he totally adores Isaac. When he meets Lydia a single mother who runs the local kids daycare center, Webber arranges a family play date for them all to hang put together. When this morphs into a romantic date for him and Lydia, he very oddly declares his undying love to this complete stranger, confusing both her and us too.

Isaac is unquestionably a  charmer and its extremely clever how Webber manages to incorporate the boy's ceaseless chatter and the odd temper tantrum into the plot.  I am not going to credit him with being a remarkable child actor because his performance is not an act at all .... although we are never sure if Webber's is either. It is in fact Isaac that engages our attention and deserves our affection, as the moment Webber is out playing on his own with 'the grown ups' he shows himself up to be a rather vapid selfish deadbeat.

At a party hosted by actor Michael Cera at his home Webber's behaviour is no more erratic and unpredictable than the host's, but it finally closes the deal with us and we totally lose any interest in how this will all turn out.

Interesting concept, and I indulged Webber's performance in the first half of the movie as being justified by his grief, but as it veered towards such self-indulgence, I ended up wishing that this vanity project had at least some other outside creative direction to deliver the promise it started out with so enthusiastically.

★★★★   

Available on DVD & Amazon VOD

NICKY'S FAMILY

In 1988 Greta Winton was scrambling around the attic of the home in Buckinghamshire where she lived with her husband Nicholas and she uncovered a secret that he had kept from her and the whole world for 50 years. Her find was a detailed scrapbook that gave details of the daring plan her husband had masterminded to rescue Czech Jewish children and transport them to safe homes in the UK before the outbreak of World War 11 in 1939.  It contained lists of the 669 children he had rescued, the names and addresses of their parents, and the details of their new foster parents who looked after them for the duration of the War.

Winton was about to travel to Switzerland for a skiing holiday in Christmas 1938, when he decided instead to travel to Prague, Czechoslovakia, to help a friend who was involved in Jewish refugee work, and had called him asking for his help. There he single-handedly established an organisation to aid children from Jewish families at risk from the Nazis. He set up an office at a dining room table in his hotel in Wenceslas Square. He wrote directly to all the Heads of States in every major country asking for asylum, but only Britain would agree to take these children in.

With very little help, and few funds, and battling officialdom at every level, he secured the transport to make three journeys with trains packed full of children.  A fourth one was scheduled to leave Prague on September 3rd 1939 the day that War broke out but the train never left, and the children on board faced certain death.

Esther Rantzen, a BBC Journalist, took up the story in 1988, and invited Winton to appear on 'That's Life' TV Programme where he was shocked to discover that the Producers had also rounded up a few dozen of the survivors to greet the man who would become to been known as the 'British Schindler'.   

This selfless humanitarian who had kept his exploits quiet from the world for half a century was knighted by The Queen, and had countless honors heaped on him by the Czech & Slovak Governments as well as being nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.  In 2009, on the 70th Anniversary of the journeys, a special 'Winton Train' re-traced the journey from Prague to London full of survivors and their families that numbered many people who have also had very distinguished lives.

Winton, still alive at the grand age of 104 years old, has never ceased doing unsung work to help others in need .... his list of achievements since the War, is staggering. What is equally impressive, as detailed in this documentary, is all the good works that his example has inspired from the people whose lives he saved.  None of them ever saw their parents again, or even managed to achieve much 'closure' on their deaths, but what Winton gave them all was a chance and a reason to live.

A wonderful insight to a most remarkable human being. A hero in the true sense of the word. Totally unmissable.

★★★★★★★★★

Now available on DVD and AMAZON VOD

KENNETH WILLIAMS : FANTABULOSA!

The late great Kenneth Williams could easily be described as Britain's own Charles Nelson Reilly. Both men were celebrated classical trained actors who worked with all the major stars of their day, but they actually found their own fame with their outrageously camp and genius comic humor which made them both much loved national treasures.  They were also both wonderfully raconteurs with a wealth of old-school show-business immensely enjoyable stories which seems a thing of the past in these days of instant faux celebrity.

Out of the limelight these two men were completely different. Williams a closeted homosexual despite his public persona was a deeply unhappy and troubled soul whose life was a constant list of phobias and unhealthy obsessions.  His somewhat morbid fear of actual one-on-one sexual activity trapped him into a leading a celibate life , although as this new (ish) movie based on his life hints, he may have had the odd encounter.  The accent being on 'odd'.  This fun-loving character on stage and screen was a total neurotic out of the limelight and struggled valiantly for years to be part of society that he seemed to have such disdain for.

Yet despite the gloom and doom (or maybe because of it?) this dramatized story of the man behind the clown was totally gripping. Starting with his unhappy childhood in London living over his father's barbershop with a mother who spoilt him rotten and literally never left his side even when he was an old man himself, through him entertaining the troops in WW2 to his life in Repertory Theatre in the Provinces and then to his eventual stardom.  The emphasis here though was very much on the man himself and not the body of his work.

Made for TV in 2006 it has a stunning tour-de-force performance by Michael Sheen who's made quite a career out of portraying real-life characters from recent British history (Tony Blair in 'The Queen', David Frost in 'Frost/Nixon', Brian Clough in 'United'). For this role he quite rightly won the prestigious Royal Television Society Best Actor Award, and was also nominated for a BAFTA (British Oscars).

Thankfully to my great surprise the movie is available in the US on Netflix, and it was a sheer joy for me to both learn about and re-live the happy memories of someone who brazenly filled our lives with such glorious raucous laughter.  In the mid 1960's no Sunday afternoon was complete in my house without listening to 'our Ken' on the radio. We loved the invention of a whole glossary of ridiculous terms for gay life back in the day when homosexuality was still illegal, and in fact this movie's title is one such term of their 'polari'.

I discovered and fell in love with Charles Nelson Reilly when I moved to the US, and likewise I think Kenneth Williams will appeal to people in other countries if they just get a chance to see what a fantabulosa person he was. Start with this film, then check out 'An Audience With Kenneth Williams' on YouTube to see/hear what you have been missing.  You wont regret it.

★★★★★★★★