02-15-2015, 01:35 AM
I was halfway through this yesterday when LCF texted me asking what's up. When I said I was watching Mahler, she was clueless. Later, when we chatted on the phone, I mentioned that the main character was some sort of music composer. "Oh, the Mahler!" she said, leaving me clueless. "You know Gustav Mahler, the famous composer, right?" she asked. No, I didn't. She chided me on my ignorance. Anyway, I was only halfway through the movie at that point, and it was late, so I saved the rest for tonight.
Before resuming, I educated myself on Mahler on the Web. Hmmm, should've done it before starting the movie. As I resumed watching, so much more started to make sense.
I think it's a great film. It has some really powerful sequences. The opening is a visual masterpiece. But I will grant that some parts drag. I mean, Mahler is a composer, and that's hard to make visual, though Ken Russell does an amazing job creating visuals. Robert Powell is magnificent playing Mahler, and Georgina Hale, who plays his wife Alma, is a revelation (she's done mostly stage, so her tremendous talent isn't as well-known to the general public).
I'm not all that familiar with Ken Russell's work -- which is an odd thing to say, because I've seen Crimes of Passion and Lair of the White Worm. While those movies had their moments, I didn't feel they were that experimental or even masterful. Yet Ken Russell is considered a maverick, and here I see why. Wow. He composes the movie in a very impressionistic and metaphoric way. It gets totally outrageous in places. For instance, there comes a point when Mahler realizes that the only thing holding him back from being appointed to an important post is the fact that he's Jewish. So he simply converts to Catholicism. Ken Russell films this in a marvelously surreal way, and the whole process -- which includes some Nazi symbols, though Mahler died in 1911 -- goes on for some ten visually intoxicating minutes.
I may need to watch this again. I'll try to talk Lady Cranefly into it. The music throughout is Mahler's, a fact I did not realize until very late in the movie. It would be good to know that from the start.
Before resuming, I educated myself on Mahler on the Web. Hmmm, should've done it before starting the movie. As I resumed watching, so much more started to make sense.
I think it's a great film. It has some really powerful sequences. The opening is a visual masterpiece. But I will grant that some parts drag. I mean, Mahler is a composer, and that's hard to make visual, though Ken Russell does an amazing job creating visuals. Robert Powell is magnificent playing Mahler, and Georgina Hale, who plays his wife Alma, is a revelation (she's done mostly stage, so her tremendous talent isn't as well-known to the general public).
I'm not all that familiar with Ken Russell's work -- which is an odd thing to say, because I've seen Crimes of Passion and Lair of the White Worm. While those movies had their moments, I didn't feel they were that experimental or even masterful. Yet Ken Russell is considered a maverick, and here I see why. Wow. He composes the movie in a very impressionistic and metaphoric way. It gets totally outrageous in places. For instance, there comes a point when Mahler realizes that the only thing holding him back from being appointed to an important post is the fact that he's Jewish. So he simply converts to Catholicism. Ken Russell films this in a marvelously surreal way, and the whole process -- which includes some Nazi symbols, though Mahler died in 1911 -- goes on for some ten visually intoxicating minutes.
I may need to watch this again. I'll try to talk Lady Cranefly into it. The music throughout is Mahler's, a fact I did not realize until very late in the movie. It would be good to know that from the start.
