Roedy Green Being John Malkovich was one of, if not the, strangest movies I have ever seen. Klimt is similarly strange, but not quite that strange. Like Russell Crowe's John Nash in A Beautiful Mind, Klimt hallucinates people, and in a similar way, you, in the audience are just as confused about who is real and who is imaginary. You are only gradually let in on understanding this.The movie is decorated with dozens of naked women who mainly parade about, or who try to seduce Klimt. Given that he is not particularly handsome, charming or intelligent, I failed to see the attraction. Perhaps it was just his fame as a painter.The interiors and costumes are opulent turn of the century Vienna. Elaborate Viennese pastries tempt the eye. The sets are the main appeal of the movie.There is a lot of cat and mouse dialogue where the characters reveal nothing and say nothing while attempting to sound profound. It is all quite frustrating.Nikolai Kinski plays the homosexual painter Egon Schiele in an exaggeratedly swish way, reminiscent of Da'an's hand gestures in Earth Final Conflict.The costumes and hair treatments are so elaborate, that I could not for the life of me tell the female characters apart. Is this a new character or an old one in a new do? The characters all behave the same way and look similar. I didn't develop any bond with any of the characters because I could not even tell them apart.

sslingland I get it. It's a cinematic version of a 12-tone piece of music. You can enjoy the sounds, but unless you're privy to the artist's contrived intentions, it's a gobbledy-gook mess. Not the worst movie I've ever seen - the costuming and scenery/sets are lovely. I was really hoping I could enjoy the film DESPITE John Malkovich; really the only film I like the man in is Being JM because it pokes fun at his ridiculous persona that pervades every character he portrays.The only reason I kept watching was the hope of being thrown a lifesaver of a shred of a story. I will agree that Kinski and the exotic women of the movie are the brightest spots. I wished the movie had been "Schiele" and revolved more around Kinski. JM as Klimt is about as bland as stale toast.

tedg While the world relaxed and enjoyed itself between wars. When art was a solitary and experimental endeavor. When Europeans rediscovered the power of nature in sex and in some cases the other way around. When lives really could be deep, and debauched and intelligent too, three men came out of Vienna: Freud and Wittgenstein were two of them. There may have not been such a concentration of greatness for many decades before and until the Fasori Gimnázium, also under by then slippery Austrian rule. There's a commonality among those two and Klimt, and even between them and the more cerebral Budapest next generation. Its a matter of passion, sense (in both meanings) and concept curvature. While the two great art nouveau geniuses were wondering about space in Brussels and Barcelona, Klimt worked his space, curvature ans escape from the inside of women. Lots of women. His work is of that type that is immediately attractive, so lots of people decorate with it. A brief familiarity with it breeds confusion, so unless you dig as deeply in viewing as he did in making, it will not connect. As a result, if you are serious about making a film of him, about him, you simply cannot do the normal thing: somehow artificially inducing drama into portraying a few known events. You cannot do what Greenaway did with Rembrandt, simply showing sexual passion and making the film painterly.So along comes Ruiz, who is a strange bird, very much like Klimt. There's no middle familiarity with him. Either you know him deeply, you wrap your life where he has, or you miss the passion. You think him dull. You actually believe that someone would spend this much energy fine tuning the ordinary. Well, the thing about these three men is that they were their own worst critics. They all three created their own new worlds were none was before, worlds so perfect and pure anyone of lesser power would be unable to break them. Then they each turned on their own creation, finding and exploiting the weaknesses of their own creations, selves and now us. The art is not in the man but in how he made himself broken.Look at each of them and see the beauty in partial dismemberment. Ruiz denotes this at the beginning with otherwise inexplicable, powerful amputee sex. As with Ruiz' best work, people act as others, split selves, whores of themselves, auditors and bureaucrats of sex. Love must be dissymmetric. Narrative to have power must be a bit jagged inside, where you want to go.I admit, I think Malkovich was a bad choice. He really can be dull. But he is supposed to stagger through this, finding puddles of warm light, clean frames or open enclosure. The women are the thing, always the thing here and they are drawn well.Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

poolbeshlie The best film I have ever seen, or not seen as it may be. This film was so astounding that I actually dozed off, occasionally awaking, looking at the screen and realising that nothing had actually happened since I last watched. As an avid film watcher and art lover, I had expected this film to be revealing, telling the audience about the wonders and misdemeanours of Klimt the artist and the man. Actually, it told me nothing. The acting was bland, stilted and lacking in emotion, bar JM, who portrayed his usual oddball self. The best thing about the film were the costumes.My mum thought she had gone senile, I thought I was trapped in a bad art house film nightmare. I was.Modigliani the film is much better.