Museum Hours (2012)
Pros: art
Cons: pace, O’Hara’s character
I wanted to watch the 2012 movie written and directed by Jem Cohen, “Museum Hours,” because it was mostly shot in Vienna’s Kunsthistoriches Museum, which I had revisited a year ago. The movie made me glad that I have never visited Vienna in winter. The sky is gray in every scene shot outside the museum in the movie, and there is often haze/fog. rather than the golden light for which Vienna is famed.
Still, I was interested in the shots of Vienna as well as of art in the great museum that inherited the Hapsburg art collection, including a Vermeer and a whole room of Breughels. I was totally uninterested in what the Montréal visitor, Anne (Mary Margaret O’Hara), sang, and, indeed in her character. She frequents the museum while ostensibly there to visit a cousin in a coma in St. Josef Hospital.
A sixty-something guard in the museum, Johann (Bobby Sommer). Is kind to her, and they have coffees and beers together in addition to his accompanying her to look at her inert cousin. The best part of the movie for me was docent Gerda Pachner (Ela Piplits) providing an unorthodox perspective on Pieter Breughel’s “The Conversion of Paul” (ca. 1567 [below]), though I have difficulty believing it would be delivered (in English) to a group of ordinary tourists. (I agree with her that the rear of a horse is an incongruous focus, both very large and close to the center of the painting, and that it is difficult to find Saul/Paul on a very un-Syrian road in the busy painting.)
There is very minimal development of the two main characters, neither of whom has much of a life, and no plot. Maybe the movie was too subtle for me, though I found the last part in which some scenes of the current city were analyzed as paintings are was very unsubtle in trying to relativize the notion of priceless masterpieces.
I felt that many shots (not those of artworks) were held too long and was bored by the 107-minute movie as a movie, though it supplemented my visit by showing stuff in the Egyptian collection (I skipped it, the movie skips the Roman sculpture that I did spend some time examining).
The Blu-Ray includes Cohen shorts, Amber City, Museum (Visiting the Unknown Ma), Anne Truitt, Working, and Museum (Visiting the Unknown Man), which run 48, 13, and 8 minutes, respectrively) and two trailers.