Thursday, February 01, 2018

Museum Hours


How could an artist not want to watch a movie with the title "Museum Hours?" This is one of my all time favorite movies. The first time I watched it, a scene with a visiting lecturer explaining Bruegel paintings stuck in my mind as the best part.

My recent second viewing seemed very different - there is a scene at the very end of the movie that I now think is possibly the best part. The narrator (Johann, a museum guard) describes an everyday scene in the movie as if it is a painting. It's the kind of thing we all see daily and probably don't notice. He says "And here, a landscape of sorts. A tall building stands on a rise and just as it draws your eye up and away the figure of an elderly woman, her clothes black as pitch, appears and makes its way up a central path which curves to the right at just enough of an incline to make one sense the lady's resolution. For it's cold and snow is just starting to fall and she must get where she's headed before obstacles increase. And one begins to wonder what the main subject is. A distant building which, tall as it is, can only rule over this kind of working class suburb or the old woman setting herself against the cold and the asphalt path until she disappears behind an enormous hedge. Leading us to wonder if the main thing could be the path itself and then there is the grey-white atmosphere which calls special attention to the bright red taillights of the cars on the left which seem impossibly red and even beautiful. . . "

I think most people will love or hate this movie - no chase scenes, no car wrecks, no vampires, no blood and gore. Just people looking at art and talking to each other.

Here is a trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqctCwhunjE

I thought IMDB had a place where you could see a list of places to view a movie, but I can't find that now. However just watch.com seems to be helpful:
https://www.justwatch.com/us/search?q=museum%20hours

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