Museum Hours (Jem Cohen)

[Mysterious Dude]

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2268732/

[dreamdead]

This one's remarkably fluid and precise. The performances aren't necessarily exceptional--in that the script isn't the most fascinating aspect of the film--but they don't have to be. This film is all on Cohen, who engineers a placid and tacit understatement, localizing many of the non-fiction elements where we simply watch museum visitors respond to the works they see in front of them. Those moments have an unassuming grace made all the stronger when the out-of-left-field moments such as the nude by-standers enter. That kind of sequence could feel blunt and overbearing thematically, but Cohen works in a such a register that it never does. And that closing, which compares art and reality, has a strength to it that calls for comparisons to Sarah Polley's similar Stories to Tell.

Quietly wonderful.

Mildly curious to see what people's criticisms of this were...

[wigwam]

:|

[Rowland]

Disappointingly, and more than a bit disconcertingly given all the smart people who love this, a polite mild yay. Grace notes aplenty, and I'm sympatico with Cohen's sensibilities, which this film threatens at too many points to render banal.