zacknabo Elmer Back plays Eisenstein (where did they find this guy?). Back's performance is magnetic and mesmerizing, one of my favorites of the year. Back brings a wonderful sense of humor to the film and is an outstanding physical actor/comedian. His slight facial gestures and mannerisms bring a full depth of dimension to his portrayal of Sergei Eisenstein. His frenetic, manic energy with a resting heart rate of about 150 beats per minute is simply a wonder to watch and in perfect step with the film's visual explosiveness. Biopics (by the way this is a VERY loose biopic) are exceptionally easy to make bad, pretty easy to make mediocre, hard as s**t to make good and nearly impossible to make unique. So it comes as no surprise that it a truly formula shattering biopic covering one of the most wildly innovative, complex and enigmatic geniuses in the history of cinema (or in the world).It's the thirties and Soviet film pioneer and Stalinists propagandists Sergei Eisenstein has been shunned by Hollywood for his obvious Red connections and on taking advice by friends such as Charlie Chaplin has gone to Mexico to make his next great "Masterpiece!" Which is more than a struggle, for as the audience slowly finds out, largely in manic diatribes spouted by Eisenstein himself, the legendary auteur is in a highly confused and vulnerable state in his life: financially, politically, sexually, philosophically and artistically. The set pieces in Eisenstein explode in glorious color imposed in fine tuned geometric framing; the depth of staging creates a world within a world, making the sets in Guanajuato a place that existed yet never quite existed. Greenaway in homage to Eisenstein uses many of his techniques montage editing, curt shots, quick scenes that suddenly cut in about three seconds just as Eisenstein, Aleksandr Dovzhenko, Dziga Vertov or other similar montage formalists such as Abel Gance would have. The difference in Greenaway's adoption and mixing of his own techniques with those classic reverence styles is that he maintains continuity in style yet never grows too predictable with his camera and never falls into the deathtrap that is nauseating Tarantino-esque pastiche. Greenaway's use of wide-angle lenses and wonderful tracking dolly shots (reminiscent of Max Ophuls) to follow the frenzied, perpetually moving Eisenstein to-and-fro is amazing and never misses a beat. At certain points Greenaway splits the screen using classic clips of Eisenstein's films and photographs of people that are being referenced as Eisenstein speaks, putting on full display the classic stylings of classic art-cinema, all the while maintaining an air of freshness.Back's performance can become much too some, but in all of Eisenstein's rambling monologues one becomes aware of this man's inner feelings, his emotions that swing from one pole to the next, his true feelings about the Soviet Bear, his fears, his eccentricities, his hang-ups, his diva-bility, as well as his true genius. While the story may seem to remain a bit too vague for some, the devil is in the details. Greenaway is not the man that is going to do a traditional deep-sea delving into the life a character. In Eisenstein Greenaway methodically externalizes the director's philosophies on life and art (and the machinations behind art). We learn about Eisenstein through simple, seemingly unimportant instances (in terms of the man's work), like how he falls for his Mexican chaperone Palomino (Luis Alberti), who eventually anally deflowers Eisenstein in a very funny, touching, matter of fact scene that I assume made many audience members cringe uncomfortably. There are also a few striking scenes with skeletons and a skull; Eisenstein becoming truly enamored with all of this imagery that's semiotics recall the mystery and exotic pageantry of "The Day of the Dead." The Day of the Dead…Eisenstein was very much interested in how the mind processed associations and I couldn't help but to think of the hopeless drunk Albert Finney played in John Huston's Mexico-set film Under the Volcano, where both Eisenstein and Finney's characters mirror each other in a particular way. Both are confused, wasting their talents, lost, lost in an existential sense and lost in a foreign place. Eisenstein in Guanajuato is crucially underrated. For fans of Eisenstein it is a must see and is still enjoyable for fans of film even if unaware of the great Sergei Eisenstein and early cinematic forms, though will certainly miss a lot.

peefyn I have not seen any of Greenaway's previous movies, and while I have seen Potemkin, I barley knew anything about (the actual) Eisenstein going in.What I loved about this movie: The editing is fantastic. It plays around with the format, having real life photos of the characters and the locations next to characters as they are mentioned, playing with angles and positions of the characters, experimenting with colors, and obviously, using montages in a great way. I hope this is all based on Eisenstein's actual writings about the subject, as it is clear that he has thoughts about what movies can do with these tools.That's the one positive thing I have to say about this movie. The characters are stylized into cartoon characters, and the dialog is boring and unengaging. The actual storyline is very forgettable. Greenaway chose to have the movie focus on Eisenstein's experiences in Mexico, but did not include any of the actual movie-making Eisenstein did there. To me, that would have been a more interesting movie - but I can understand that Greenaway had a different vision for this story.The sexual scenes were graphical, but not grotesque or provoking (unless you are provoked by homosexuality).

andychrist27 New Peter Greenaway movie about Russian movie-maker Eisenstein's Mexico odyssey in 1931, when he went there to make a documentary with the financing of famous writer Upton Sinclair and ended up with 400km of film reel he was never allowed to edit. According to the movie, comrade Eisenstein, as a closet homo, also lost his (anal) virginity there, at age 33...and the scene where it happens is quite graphic.I'm not a fan of Greenaway but this movie proved to be very enjoyable as long as you don't take it too seriously. It is not a traditional biopic, being quite experimental and with constant over-the-top intensive dialogue. Some visually beautiful scenes and inventive camera work and framing. It also has quite a lot of emotional and even existential depth.Right at the beginning, when we are introduced to all the main characters, Greenaway shows photos of real historical figures in a split scene with actors portraying them...it must be said every one of them looks surprisingly similar to the real thing. For me as a Estonian it was pretty funny to hear all the Russian characters speaking English with Finnish accent (apparently for Greenaway as a Briton this sounded close enough to legit Russian accent so he had Finnish Swedes playing all the Soviets). Elmer Bäck as Eisenstein is fantastic in this movie and pretty much carries it on his own at times.Homophobes are advised to avoid this one like a plague though.

cllrdr-1 Ordinarily I can take Peter Greenaway or leave him alone -- chiefly the latter. But he really scores this time with a story that has longed to be told.As is known Sergei Eisenstein hoped to work in Hollywood in the early thirties just as sound came in. But thanks to aright-wing campaign (plus its own lack of imagination) Paramount Pictures was scared off from making films of with of the scripts the great Russian director had written : an adaptation of Dreiser's "An American Tragedy" and an original historical drama "Sutter's Gold." The novelist Upton Sinclair stepped in and elected to back a film Eisenstein wanted to make about Mexico. But he knew nothing about film production and less about Eisenstein's highly improvisatory working methods. Under-budgeted and best by problems the shoot was brought to a halt when Sinclair's brother-in-law, Hunter Kimbrough discovered SME was having too much fun south of the border. Moreover he got a gander at the great man's cache of frankly gay pornographic drawings. Eisenstein not only never got to edit "Que Viva Mexico" -- he never even saw the rushes. He returned to Russia where he made "Alexander Nevsky" and "Ivam the Terrible" Sinclair meanwhile had the "Que Viva Mexico" footage sliced and diced into travelogues.This is the backdrop of what Greenaway has done which s to present Eisenstein's Mexican sojourn as a sexual awakening. He falls madly in love (and lust) with a handsome guide. Greenaway brings the full bore of his visual imagination to telling this tale with multiple images and lighting the likes of which hasn't been seen since Sternberg. Elmer Back is superb as SME and Luis Alberti is equally great as his love interest. Not to be missed.