One thing I love about this film is that users either love it or hate it - there's hardly any middle ground. That response corresponds very much to the way the film plays out. It acts as if it was a biopic, but in fact it is only one type of film, a Raoul Ruiz movie. Ruiz takes up an idea and explores it, visually and intellectually. Then he reverses it. He explores the relation between the idea and its opposite. Then he takes that relation and looks at its reversal... and so on: there's always order, but it's always tangled. It's cerebral, but also surreal, and playful. The film is, among others about looking at movies and looking at paintings. Is art a functional depiction of the world, as one character holds - does it work like a mirror? People who criticize this film for not being historically accurate seem to think so - implying that they don't like Klimt, as his paintings were not particularly realistic either. Or is art like the other side of a coin, a complementary reality to the one we experience daily? This is one central question of this film that shows a lot of mirrors and coins. In a painting or a movie, a mirror image looks just as real as a filmed or painted object. Ruiz follows up on this observation. That is why there are so many doubles in the film. Klimt never knows if the woman he desires most is the original or a double. What does that mean for his feelings? He also meets his own double, and beats him up. Then there are coins to denote oppositions. When he first visits that woman, a servant flips a coin, and Klimt meets her in front of mirrors. On another visit, another servant flips a coin, and this time Klimt steps beyond the mirror. The doublings and imaginations seem to increase exponentially in this film. You can look at yourself and you can be looked at. Klimt glances into a microscope and asks: "This is me?" He visits a brothel where all the girls wear mustaches and enters a cage with a Gorilla mask on - the man who creates high-brow spectacles turns himself into a low-brow entertainment. Yes, it makes sense, and yes, it's hilarious. Not many period biopics make you laugh that much. This is also something not too many people seem to notice: This film is funny. Fun is when opposites crash into each other, and Ruiz knows that. I really enjoyed this one.
Review of Klimt
