Klimt (2006)

31% of critics liked it
(26 reviews)
31% of users liked it
(3,564 ratings)

Raúl Ruiz's Klimt uses an amorphous, nonchronological narrative to cinematize events from the life of one of the 20th century's most profound artists: the Austrian painter Gustav Klimt (here portrayed by John Malkovich). Ruiz begins with Klimt's painful death from syphilis, and spends the remainder… More Raúl Ruiz's Klimt uses an amorphous, nonchronological narrative to cinematize events from the life of one of the 20th century's most profound artists: the Austrian painter Gustav Klimt (here portrayed by John Malkovich). Ruiz begins with Klimt's painful death from syphilis, and spends the remainder of the film transitioning, loosely and freely, between episodes that befell the painter. The film pays particularly strong attention to the artist's proclivity for scandalizing the European upper crust with overtly erotic subject matter and presentation, and his many affairs -- notably a lengthy one with his perpetual inspiration, Lea de Castro (Saffron Burrows). Throughout Klimt's life, a figure known as the Secretary (Stephen Dillane) comes and goes, who is actually a product of his fevered imagination -- and with whom the painter debates continually about the function of art in contemporary Western civilization, and the relevance of the artist. This enables Ruiz to create both a biographical sketch and a philosophical treatise. Visually, Ruiz and director of photography Ricardo Aronovich make the ambitious decision to recreate Klimt's style of painting on a cinematographic plane. Unfortunately, difficulty befell this picture from the beginning, when the director (for some unascertainable reason) opted to draft the initial script in French, have it translated into German, and then have the German draft translated into English and revised by author Gilbert Adair -- rendering the dialogue stilted and unconvincing. Complications also arose on the distribution end. Still infuriated by the distributive mutilation that befell his previous film, the whopping Time Regained (and doubtless concerned that this might happen again), Ruiz pliantly struck a bargain with distributors for Klimt. He trimmed his original, 135-minute "director's cut" down to a 96-minute "producer's cut" for general consumption, which rendered much of the material less fluid and coherent. Both versions screened at the 2006 Rotterdam Film Festival. ~ Nathan Southern, Rovi

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Rating, Runtime: Unrated, 1 hr. 36 min.
Directed By: Raoul Ruiz
Written By: Raoul Ruiz
Genres: Drama, Special Interest

In Theaters: Jan 1, 2005 Wide
On DVD: Jan 8, 2008
Studio: Outsider Pictures

Critic Reviews

Stephen Holden, New York Times
John Malkovich has virtually cornered the market on portraying aesthetes in the thrall of demonic visions. Klimt adds to his gallery of elegant monsters.
Leba Hertz, San Francisco Chronicle
A good bio of any historical character has to have a compelling story, whether evil or good. Klimt appears to have had that story. I sure would have liked to know what it was.
Kevin Thomas, Los Angeles Times
Ruiz is terrific in evoking a heady atmosphere of ornate fin de siecle decadence, and Malkovich is ideally cast as a coolly intellectual, free-thinking, free-living aesthete...
Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader
[It's] an eyeful.
Geoff Pevere, Toronto Star
Klimt comes across as a lovely but unfathomable object, and an inadvertent case study in the argument for the ultimate integrity of Klimt's art.
Kamal Al-Solaylee, Globe and Mail
Whatever its flaws may be (and, frankly, they are legion), Raoul Ruiz's latest film is a biopic that mixes and matches visual and narrative styles boldly, wildly, madly enough to invigorate the genre, but not enough to save the movie.
Dennis Schwartz, Ozus' World Movie Reviews
Poor excuse for an unconventional biopic.
Melissa Anderson, Time Out New York
Imagining an artist's life as little more than a series of portentous set pieces, [director] Ruiz, who also wrote the script, has made a film that is neither portrait nor allegory but empty ornamentalism.
Ken Fox, TV Guide's Movie Guide
Raoul Ruiz's absurdly overwrought phantasmagoria tries to recast the notorious Viennese artist's life as a kind of Divine Comedy: Inferno.
Doris Toumarkine, Film Journal International
The film, however provocative and full of eye candy, is really for hardcore art-house fans only.
Beverly Berning, culturevulture.net
Klimt is a feast for the eyes and the mind.
Bob Strauss, Los Angeles Daily News
Klimt is obviously not a dumb film, but it is one big ol' fruitcake of a movie.
Wade Major, Boxoffice Magazine
Fact, fiction and chronology are juggled and blurred with such abandon that piecing it all together is bound to be a fruitless and frustrating effort.
Ella Taylor, L.A. Weekly
Ruiz is so intent on harnessing the painter to his own -- here, rather arid -- relativism that he never manages to convey the unfettered eros that brings crowds flocking to exhibitions of Klimt's work, even as critics hold their noses.
Jim Slotek, Jam! Movies
In the end, all the effort adds up to naught, except a hunger for the salient details the movie missed.
Angela Baldassarre, Sympatico.ca
An almost unbearable collection of monologues with no regard for substantive or involving dialogue, the film sheds little or no light on the genius behind some extraordinary artwork.
Pam Grady, Reel.com
A handsome film, but no amount of superior art direction or glittering surface can obscure the rigor mortis that engulfs the drama.

Read all 17 critic reviews

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Featured Audience Ratings

Walter M

[font=Century Gothic]"Klimt" starts in a hospital in Vienna in 1918 as both the First World War and the Austro-Hungarian Empire are coming to an end. Of all the beds occupied, only the one containing the dying artist Gustav Klimt(John Malkovich) is of interest to the… More
[font=Century Gothic]"Klimt" starts in a hospital in Vienna in 1918 as both the First World War and the Austro-Hungarian Empire are coming to an end. Of all the beds occupied, only the one containing the dying artist Gustav Klimt(John Malkovich) is of interest to the viewer. In his delirium, he thinks back to 1900 and a fateful trip to Paris.[/font] [font=Century Gothic][/font] [font=Century Gothic]Written and directed by Raul Ruiz, "Klimt" is a return to the extreme stream of consciousness territory that he had previously visited with his adaptation of Proust's "Time Regained" which also featured John Malkovich. There are some nice touches with this movie such as the silent movie within a movie and the idea that Klimt represented the first breath of the 20th century in conflict against the dying 19th century. But by venturing too far into a house of mirrors, Ruiz fails to deliver anything of substance concerning the artist, nor is it anywhere near as erotic as it should have been.[/font]

Cast

John Malkovich
as Klimt
Veronica Ferres
as Midi
Saffron Burrows
as Lea de Castro

Georgia Reeve
as Lea de Castro double [stand in]
Stephen Dillane
as Secretary
Paul Hilton
as Duke Octave

See full cast

Klimt (2006)

Critic Reviews

Featured Audience Ratings

Walter M

Cast

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