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Museum Hours (2012)

Museum Hours (2012)

GENRESDrama
LANGEnglish,German
ACTOR
Mary Margaret O'HaraBobby SommerEla PiplitsMarcus O'Hara
DIRECTOR
Jem Cohen

SYNOPSICS

Museum Hours (2012) is a English,German movie. Jem Cohen has directed this movie. Mary Margaret O'Hara,Bobby Sommer,Ela Piplits,Marcus O'Hara are the starring of this movie. It was released in 2012. Museum Hours (2012) is considered one of the best Drama movie in India and around the world.

In the Kunsthistorisches Art Museum in Vienna, Johann is a security guard who finds a special quiet magic there. One day, a Canadian woman arrives to visit to the city, and the two strike up a friendship through their appreciation of art. That relationship helps put all the other goings-on at the museum and in the city in perspective, as Johann observes and participates in them in a world where art can say so much more than a casual visitor might know.

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Museum Hours (2012) Reviews

  • Bonds us to a world of stillness

    howard.schumann2013-07-21

    "The real voyage of discovery lies in not seeing new landscapes but in having new eyes" - Marcel Proust Jem Cohen's Museum Hours moves art beyond the confines of a stuffy museum and takes it out into the streets of Vienna where its profound observations make irrelevant the artificial distinction between art and life. Cohen widens our view of what is "inside" the museum to include what is "outside," not as a separate part of the experience but as an integrated whole. The film is narrated by Johann (Bobby Sommer), a soft-spoken museum guard at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna who, after spending his younger days traveling with rock bands, has worked at the museum for the past six years, getting to know each painting intimately. His favorite room is the Bruegel room where Flemish Renaissance painter Pieter Bruegel's depictions of 16th century peasant life touch him most deeply. Having just arrived from Montreal to visit her cousin who is in a coma, Anne (Mary Margaret O'Hara) seeks advice from Johann about directions to the hospital. As the two talk about the city, they develop a friendship and he acts as her tour guide, escorting her to visit ancient and modern sites in Vienna. As the experience opens him to a renewed appreciation of the city and its history, the camera focuses its attention on city life in a way that allows us to notice details that we may have never seen before: young boys on skateboards in the park, an old woman walking up a hill flanked by red cars, the walls of an ancient church, abandoned beer cans on the sidewalk, the faces of pedestrians huddled in the cold waiting for a bus, the boarded-up storefront of a store, and the give and take of bargaining at a local flea market. Johann and Anne also spend time in the hospital where they talk to Anne's cousin who cannot hear them. Johann describes in details some of the paintings of Rembrandt from memory "all very dark and wise-looking," while Anne sings her a lovely ballad. The narrative of the woman and her cousin develops slowly but the film is not about the story, but about observation and our connection with the world. One of the film's highlights is the discussion of Bruegel by the tour guide (Ela Piplits) talking to a group of eager visitors. According to the guide, in a time of political repression carried out by the Duke of Alba, Bruegel's paintings were radical, "more radical than they might seem." Dressing as a peasant to immerse himself in the culture of the poorer classes, Bruegel's depiction of the masses was not judgmental but focused on the small details of peasant life. As the director puts it, "This man (Breugel) took a very close, careful look at how working people, peasants lived and did it without a sentimental overlay, but with a respectful interest in the details of their lives." Another moving part of Johann's narration is his story about one of his coworkers, an art student who is no longer at the museum. As Johann tells us, the kid, whom he calls a "Marxist punk," ridiculed the idea of a museum, saying it is all about money and that the still lifes of famous artists are the equivalent of piles of Rolex watches, champagne bottles, and flat-screen TVs. Though Johann obviously disagrees with this assessment, he does not put the student down, dismiss his objections, or find the need to offer a defense. Museum Hours is a riveting experience that bonds us to a world of stillness, beyond the limits of our sense perception. The film helps us to see with new eyes, enabling us to move towards a deeper, more truthful experience of ourselves and the world, one in which a young black boy in a hoodie is as rare and beautiful as a Rembrandt.

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  • Slow? That's what it's about.

    michaeljayallen2013-07-17

    I left the theater in a sort of observational trance, and vowed to get to the Metropolitan Museum ASAP and back to Vienna as soon as I can. I'll admit I'm kind of like the characters in the film. If you are a 13 year old boy whose favorite movie is The Transformers this might not be for you. Then again, you might learn something. There isn't much plot and there isn't much conflict but it isn't about plot or conflict. It's about art and life and to me it wasn't irritatingly slow at all and I wouldn't have cut a second. The pace and observational tone of the film are necessary to what it's about. The two nonactor main character actors do a wonderful job. They aren't called on to do a lot off complex stuff, and maybe they wouldn't cut it as Martha and George, but they are perfect here. The film has a lot to say about art and life, without being in any way didactic. The only part that I had the least impatience with was the scene with the somewhat annoying curator lecturing a group, although it did serve its purpose of making some points about the art while revealing a bit about the observers of art as well. There is also one scene that stands out in its sudden deviation from the flat observational realism of the rest of the film into a bit of symbolic surrealism but it's not without meaning either. Most of the film is about quiet introspective moments. One scene that isn't is of Johann and Anne joining in with patrons at the bar drinking and dancing to ethnic music on Immigrant Night. (Really, I think that's what they called it). Later, thinking about Breugel's Peasant Wedding...

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  • We Are All Subjects in a Painting by Pieter Bruegel

    GeneSiskel2014-08-03

    This is a mostly plot less, mostly reflective, semi-serious, semi-whimsical movie with the tone of a PBS documentary. It is a lot like a landscape painting. It will work best for photographers, lovers of photography and Pieter Bruegel the Elder, museum goers who routinely rent audio guides, and anyone else predisposed to view the condition of humans in the 21st century as alternately harsh and exuberant (or punctuated by esthetic surprises), hemmed in by the state, and leading inevitably to the grave. Have a good life. A woman from Montreal, in Vienna to visit a hospitalized childhood friend, meets a taciturn guard at the Kunsthistorisches Museum, and together they take in the city and its inhabitants, which together become a reflection of the art housed in the museum. "Museum Hours" is a bit ponderous at times but rarely slow.

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  • "Why in the darkness do I see so clearly?"

    doug_park20012014-02-28

    It's hard to review a film this incredible, but I'll try. MUSEUM HOURS looked like it might be kind of boring, but after watching, I can't see why any more or less adult person would not be intrigued by at least certain aspects of this film. Though pretty distractible, I was held spellbound from start to finish. Like most people, I generally like a strong plot-line with tension, surprises, and all of that. While MUSEUM HOURS has very solid character development and cohesion between its scenes, it just isn't a story-story and is one of those rare films that doesn't need much sequence of events. It's far less depressing than it may appear and actually quite funny in certain--naked people casually strolling the Kunsthistoriches, Johann's narration of missing strategic body parts on ancient sculptures--places. This film is, of course, all about art imitating life and vice versa. But don't let that scare you off. It's totally lacking in pretense and plays no tricks with its audience, carrying the casual viewer along with it. If I'm making MUSEUM HOURS sound like stoner-food, I can only say that it's a drug of the very best kind. Brilliantly simple, without any of the obscurantist b.s. we often encounter in films of this sort. There's a lot about Bruegel, one of the few painters who's ever meant much to me. Yet, even if Bruegel doesn't move you, other things in this film most likely will. A myriad of miscellaneous images, some "everyday," some "famous art": MUSEUM HOURS gives new insights into even the simplest, oft-ignored imagery. You'll never be able to look at another landscape--real, imagined, on canvas, whatever--in a cursory way again. Forgive me, but MUSEUM HOURS is truly mind-expanding. The biggest reason why this film succeeds in being artsy without any of the negative connotations of that term is that it's narrated by Johann, a guard at the famous museum in Vienna who, though he's never been a particular fan of painting, has had much time to stare idly at the artwork--which, of course, includes the visitors and everything else around him--until it becomes so familiar that he notices new details and meanings with every view. Anne, the visitor from Montreal who likes art-in-general but is in Vienna mainly to visit her sister in the hospital, provides further perspectives in her conversations with Johann. There is also a very memorable five minutes with Gerda, amazingly keen in her descriptions but still friendly and open-minded with her tour group. I don't give ten stars to many films, but anything less would be an injustice here. Though I'm sure that I'd EVENTUALLY grow tired of it, I could watch MUSEUM HOURS every night for quite a while.

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  • Slow-paced, art-house indie, with weak plot, still has its charms, with steady focus on famed Viennese Art Museum

    Turfseer2013-07-15

    Jem Cohen's 'Museum Hours' has all the hallmarks of a typical indie 'art-house' production: slow-paced, intellectual and attempting to draw that important connection between life and art. The plot is perhaps the film's weakest link. The protagonist is 'Anne' who doesn't have much of a back story. What we do find out is that Anne is Canadian and needs to borrow money from a friend so she can visit a long-lost cousin in Vienna, who is dying from a terminal illness. The cousin never wakes up from the coma she's in and we find out nothing about her at all. Anne's desire to visit her cousin is basically a device to move her to Vienna where she visits the Kunsthistorisches Art Museum and meets a kindly tour guide, Johann. Johann ends up serving as the film's narrator, commenting on the various paintings and other works of art in the museum. He also shows Anne around Vienna and comforts her when her cousin passes away. A good part of the film focuses on the paintings of Pieter Bruegel the Elder, which are housed in the Kunsthistorisches Art Museum. In fact, approximately one third of the surviving paintings of Bruegel, can be found in that museum. There is a very interesting lecture presented by a lecturer at the museum concerning Bruegel which is featured around the film's midpoint. This is perhaps the highlight of the entire film. The rest of the film focuses on Johann's observations regarding the multitude of people who visit the museum everyday. Of particular interest, are the reactions of teenage visitors, who seem to be most collectively interested in the paintings that feature people who have had their heads chopped off. Director Cohen also attempts to draw a parallel between everyday scenes of life in Vienna to the subjects that can be seen of the people from long ago, in the paintings we view at the museum. 'Museum Hours' is interesting when it focuses on the paintings and works of art at the museum as well as the observations of its visitors. Johann also is an interesting character whose commentary throughout the film, pulls one in. But Anne is too much of a sad sack and the narrative regarding the dying cousin, is significantly devoid of conflict. It's hard to get really excited about 'Museum Hours' due to the weak plot. But there's a great deal of interesting information here about Bruegel's paintings that is worth a look. For those who are particularly enamored with art-house flicks, this film will be probably be high up on your list.

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