Museum Hours (2013) Review

4/5

This is not so much a narrative film as it is an art piece reflecting the world upon which it is set: an art museum in Vienna. Jem Cohen (serving as director, writer, cinematographer, editor and producer) has crafted a story in which each and every shot serves as a kind of moving portrait, and the eye searches vigorously around the frame to pick up every hidden and wonderful detail, akin to how one would treat a painting. It is a truly stunning cinematic feat to construct each frame with an artist's delicate touch and fill it with the beauty of a thousand brushstrokes.

The film, essentially, is like walking through a museum. We stop at each frame for sometimes a minute or two, and we look around it as we bathe in its overreaching glow. The beauty of it is that, within each frame, Cohen has populated the space with enough to keep the mind stimulated and the eye lively. Then, every so often as the mood shifts or the theme transitions, we cut to black and simulate the walking period between pictures as we stroll through this particular exhibit.

The cinematography, as if it had to be said, is stunning. Mary Margaret O'Hara, Bobby Sommer, and Ela Piplits put in very natural performances and help create this world and give it an emotional weight. They bounce off each other with calm elegance, and appear to have been living as these characters for many years. I do feel that the film could have been 15-20 minutes shorter and have gotten the same, if not greater effect. In any case, it is cinematically brilliant as is and is worth your seeking it out.

I would like to close by briefly discussing one moment in the film. It isn't a spoiler, however if you wish for your experience to be completely untainted you should stop reading now.

As the visitors of the museum in Vienna stroll through and watch, we watch them. It is an odd, almost surreal moment of tasteful visual eavesdropping, until the camera pans out and we see that each of these patrons are naked, completely, much like the subjects they look at. This is the moment where it is made most clear that the film is a museum of its own: we are looking in on this living artwork, in this time, in the present moment, as the subjects pose to inspect a painting or judge a sculpture. It is one of the most breathtakingly brave, gorgeous, and philosophical moments in any film this year. This moment alone is worth the price of admission, and the experience as a whole is one to be had in a theater.