Anselm (Anselm – Das Rauschen der Zeit)

Director Wim Wenders

Wenders with Anselm Kiefer

Anselm Kiefer

ANSELM (Anselm – Das Rauschen der Zeit)                       B                                                aka:  Anselm: The Noise of Time                                                                                     Germany  (93 mi)  2023  d: Wim Wenders

It wasn’t […] a provocation for the sake of it.  I did what I thought was absolutely necessary at the time […]  It was during a time [1968–69] when the whole subject of World War II, fascism, the Third Reich, was not addressed at all.  In school, we had it for three weeks and that was it. At this time, it was very important to bring all this back into memory and work on it.  I held a mirror up to everyone’s face.             —Anselm Kiefer on Occupations (Besetzungen)

Having both grown up in a postwar German landscape at precisely the same time, both attending the same university at Freiburg-im-Breisgau (Kiefer studied law, Wenders studied medicine before pursuing different directions), Wenders explores the massive artistic designs of multi-dimensional artist and sculptor Anselm Kiefer, eschewing any talking heads or biographical attempts to understand the man’s life and instead delves completely into his works with an unapologetically admiring profile, literally immersing viewers into an undiscovered world, much like Werner Herzog’s Cave of Forgotten Dreams 3D (2010), using 3D (recorded in 6k resolution) to alter our perspective, as the depth of field changes the act of seeing, providing a more spatial context in our minds as opposed to the traditional flat surface, taking the film to a more transcendental level.  This film may actually bring viewers closer to Kiefer’s work than they might otherwise have the opportunity to see in their lifetimes.  He’s also written nearly two dozen books, none of which are explored here, also designing a one-of-a-kind series that are handmade with mixed materials, including photographs that are sometimes painted over, and are among his least accessible works, where it is usually not possible to see more than a few pages at a time when exhibited in galleries, while one publication has assembled selected pages from 75 of these in one volume, The Books of Anselm Kiefer, 1969-1990.  Premiering at Cannes as a special screening, his second film at the festival along with Perfect Days (2023) which screened in competition, it is arranged chronologically on the basis of the workshops Kiefer has had, impeccably shot by Franz Lustig and stereographer Sebastian Cramer, often feeling like floating, which really gives viewers a sense of the epic scale of the work, Wenders also employs Leonard Küßner as an award-winning German composer, where the music is the least noticed aspect of the film, though its whispered voices offscreen are reminiscent of Wings of Desire (Der Himmel über Berlin) (1987), with the director curiously borrowing liberally from a Jack Cocker BBC television documentary entitled ANSELM KIEFER: REMEMBERING THE FUTURE (2014), which seems like a controversial choice, using archival interviews as a biographic profile.  Lacking the colorful sensuality and rhythmic grace of Pina in 3D (2011), where viewers are enveloped in the dance movement of Pina Bausch, literally taking us into the choreographed realms of her imagination, this is a more somber, intellectual work, like retreating into the archives of old painting books, which is essentially what this film does, highlighting some of the staggering work of one of the greatest artists of our time, though his path has been filled with controversy, immersing himself into the “open wound of German history” at a time when Germany was still recovering from the war, where his mission was to “protest against forgetting” and recontextualize history, believing art can potentially heal not only a traumatized nation but a divided world.  He rattled some feathers in the late 1960’s and early 70’s as he outraged his fellow Germans with his photo-essay of Nazi salutes in a series of self-portraits in various European locations entitled Occupations (Besetzungen), (Occupations / Heroic Symbols – In Focus), a gesture that was not only shocking, but illegal as the Sieg Heil Nazi salute was a punishable crime in Germany since the denazification in 1945.  It was his way of forcing his fellow Germans to confront the past rather than ignore it, reaching back beyond the postwar period to many traditional German themes, calling up the history of German culture, depicting figures such as Richard Wagner and Goethe, using paintings to engage in the past and ask ethical questions. The affront he generated led to accusations from Belgian poet and visual artist Marcel Broodthaers that he’s “a fascist who thinks he’s an antifascist,” drawing criticism that he was a reactionary from the German press, which was not yet ready to open a dialogue with the past, instead espousing the political agenda of forgetting anything regarding Hitler and the Nazi’s, having purged remnants of the National Socialist ideology as an unwanted past that must be swept aside to make way for the “normalization” of the future.  Though he was largely shunned in Germany, Kiefer found a new audience in the United States, achieving fame and notoriety in equal measure in the 1980’s.  After the war, German artists rarely acknowledged the violence of the Third Reich, much less the Holocaust, while also refusing to acknowledge the presence of former Nazis in German society, many of whom returned to positions of influence, as the country at the time was instead focused on a singleminded path to modernization and economic stability.  Both known for their aesthetic explorations of German national identity, Rainer Werner Fassbinder was that rare filmmaker who similarly addressed this issue, driven to redefine what it meant to be German in a post-Nazi world, especially in his later films like BERLIN ALEXANDERPLATZ (1980), LILI MARLEEN (1981), and the BRD Trilogy, where a theme of forgetting the past is especially prominent in Veronika Voss (Die Sehnsucht der Veronika Voss) (1981). 

There is no one quite like Anselm Kiefer, having studied under Peter Dreher (Peter Dreher: 'In my pictures I underline the act of seeing') in Karlsruhe and Joseph Beuys (Who Was Joseph Beuys, and Why Was He Important?) in Düsseldorf, where his painting began to elucidate his contempt for the Nazis and their reprehensible legacy, instilling his brush strokes with a combination of rage and grief, obsessively concerned with images of myth and history, which can never escape one another.  Kiefer is famous for saying “Art really is something very difficult.  It is difficult to make, and it is sometimes difficult for the viewer to understand.”  A chronicle of a country still not ready to face its racist and murderous past, Wenders examines an artist who explores human existence and the cyclical nature of history, where his practice of creating art seeks to reclaim the spirit of German and Norse mythology, exploring how it was misused as propaganda by the Nazis, where a recurring theme is a fascination with the seasonal nature of elements and their ability to continually be reborn.  Drawing inspiration from literature, poetry, philosophy, science, mythology, and religion, the documentary is a visual and emotional experience, allowing viewers to watch such a gifted artist in the act of creation, unconventionally working through different mediums, as relatively few artists paint with blowtorches and melting pots, highlighting the immensity and complexity of Kiefer's work.  For instance, the elusive poetry of Holocaust survivor Paul Celan (the only member of his family to survive) has played a role, a constant presence in Kiefer’s paintings since adolescence when he discovered the 1945 poem written in a concentration camp, Todesfuge (Death Fugue), Death Fugue by Paul Celan - Poems, a lyrical evocation of the Nazi death camps, which Celan reads out loud as the camera slowly pans the surface of a series of Kiefer paintings, where this interaction accentuates what’s so essential about both men.  With its own intoxicating rhythm and sound, the horror of the content of Celan’s poem is made more horrific through the juxtaposition of the poem’s sonic strangeness and Kiefer’s own painterly expression, where the subject matter intrudes heavily on the surfaces, with thick black paint mixed with soot and straw, drawing us into the history of the Third Reich, though unfortunately Celan drowned himself in the Seine on Hitler’s birthday in 1970.  People are largely absent in Kiefer’s works, where there are enormous paintings of devastated landscapes, with the artist acknowledging “You can’t just paint a landscape when tanks have driven through it.”  Kiefer also works with different textures, mixing lead, glass, straw, wood, seeds, dried flowers, and ash with brick, sand, concrete, textiles, plant material, books, and fire.  As his list of materials grew, so too did the scale of his canvases, employing the use of cranes, forklifts, and a lifting platform.  Working with themes of history, memory, and mythology, Kiefer produces work that is consistently controversial and monumental in its scale and ambition, where seeing the film in a theater may help viewers grasp just how large and impressive his work really is, where an early shot from high above in an industrial sized warehouse reveals a tiny human on the floor dwarfed by the grandiosity of the building, as we see the artist bicycling through a massive studio comprised of his work, ANSELM by Wim WENDERS - Clip 1 YouTube (1:07).  We’ve seen his artistry reverently showcased a decade earlier by Sophie Fiennes in her near wordless film Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow (2010), where we see the sprawling Barjac studio complex taking shape, featuring a soundtrack by Ligeti, where this may be considered an extension of that film, no longer the construction project it was a decade ago, as we’re finally able to walk inside and feel the enormity of it all.  Perhaps Kiefer and his place in history can also be viewed through the contrasting lens of different genders from Fiennes and Wenders, which bring a unique aspect to one’s appreciation, as we draw on our own personal experiences and backgrounds, often viewing the same things quite differently.  Shot over the course of two years, Wenders does provide some backstory about Kiefer’s childhood and how he became an artist, intermingling archival footage of children playing in the postwar rubble, while also introducing young actors playing a re-enacted version of the artist as a boy and young man, which happens to be played by the great nephew and son of the filmmaker and artist at different ages, Anton Wenders and Daniel Kiefer, another decision some might find questionable, where more than anything it seems to bind the vision of two German artists together, while eventually allowing the older and younger Anselm to become one.     

Wenders traces Kiefer’s path from his native Germany to his current home in France, connecting the stages of his life to the essential places of a career that spans more than five decades, where the film reinvents paintings, photographs, archival footage, sculptures, drawings, woodcuts, buildings, and landscapes, blurring the borders between the past and the present.  While some may extol the virtues of 3D, which is notorious for darkening the already darkened images of this artist, the colossal size of Kiefer’s work is already staggering, where honing in on the 3D volume and spatial largesse is not really necessary, as viewers already get the point, though it does intensify the aesthetic experience, where the sharp textures are quite simply amazing.  What really stands out, however, is one artist merging their creative vision with another, as that’s unique in any film, where the obvious question in making this documentary remains, how do you present a piece of art in a way that allows viewers to come to their own interpretation while also respecting the artist’s original intent?  Hoping to confront the horrors of his country’s history, Kiefer uses charred remnants of his paintings to make books, symbols of learning and transmitting knowledge, wanting the pages to simulate the burnt flesh of those who died in the Holocaust, taking an unflinching view of the dark side of humanity.  The son of a German art teacher, Kiefer’s books have constituted a significant part of his work, where one of the more amusing scenes has the artist flipping through the pages of a vintage old art book while simultaneously holding his cigar, something unthinkable for any of the rest of us, afraid we’d ruin the page from dropped ashes, but Kiefer is under no such illusion, as if the books were an extension of his hands, where in his mind they are inseparable.  Working in the wooded region of Odenwald for the early part of his career, he converted a former brick factory into his studio, creating an early series of sculptures of white wedding dresses dipped in plaster, headless figures that stand in a wooded landscape, monuments to the “known-unknown women of antiquity,” paying homage to poets like Sappho, whose poems were “recomposed following the quotations of men,” where most of her real words are lost to history, yet we hear the whispered voices of women, “We may be the nameless and the forgotten, but we do not forget a thing.”  When seen in 3D, beams of light reach all the way into the theater, providing a warm glow.  He would go on to create another series featuring wedding dresses, with their flowing pleats cast in plaster, resin, or bronze.  Kiefer is a great revisitor of themes, where his art is best seen not as a progression but as a cycle, a reflection of how he sees the present and the past.  “No atom is ever lost,” he points out, and so, for him, the atoms that surround him and make up his work are the tangible remains of former times and long dead people, not just part of himself, but also a part of Shakespeare, Nietzsche, and even Hitler, with sentence fragments offering a commentary on his work,  ANSELM by Wim WENDERS - Clip 2 YouTube (1:11).  The Kiefer worldview is probably best seen at La Ribaute, his sprawling 200 acre compound near Barjac in the Cévennes of France, as the nearby woods reminded him of the Black Forest of his childhood.  When Kiefer moved there in 1992 he needed 70 truckloads to move the contents of his studio, turning this quiet domain into a Brobdingnag, a fictional land of the giants, crafted on an Olympian scale, viewed as his Wagneresque Gesamtkunstwerk, surely one of the most extraordinary artworks of the last century, but Wenders offers no commentary, never questioning the gargantuan excess on display, or how it might mirror the grandiosity of Nazi aesthetics, allowing the works to speak for themselves.  A former silk factory in the 19th century, it has expanded considerably following the artist’s development projects, from the gigantic four-story concrete amphitheater to the underground networks of crypts, tunnels, and artificial ponds.  Dotting the grounds are giant cubes, teetering concrete towers made from shipping containers, a cathedral-like barn filled with house-sized paintings, an underground temple of Karnak, with a series of subterranean pavilions the size of tennis courts, each filled with a single work inside, where the colossal effect is overwhelming.  The site is what Kiefer calls “reverse architecture,” putting artifacts back into the landscape, initially moving there for its wildness and to escape the art world, but this is another way of addressing and redressing the past.  La Ribaute is no longer his main workplace, having donated that to posterity, as he moved to another mammoth-sized studio at a warehouse in Croissy-Beaubourg outside Paris.  One of the changes in Kiefer's work after his move to France was a broadening of his themes, as after leaving Germany behind, he moved on from the war as well.  Perhaps a reflection of his own mortality, his art after the 1990’s is more obsessed with a connection between heaven and earth, painting swirling constellations with the same dark tonality, suggesting both order and chaos. 

Anselm Kiefer: Remembering the Future on Vimeo  Jack Cocker BBC Documentary from 2014,YouTube (1:03:44)

Dial M for Murder

DIAL M FOR MURDER – made in 3D          A-  
2D version             B+    

USA  (105 mi)  1954  d:  Alfred Hitchcock 

They talk about flat-footed policemen. May the saints protect us from the gifted amateur.   
 —Scotland Yard Chief Inspector Hubbard (John Williams)

Having seen this film in both versions, a preference exists for watching Grace Kelly in 3D, who passionately kisses two different men in the opening two minutes of the movie, where Hitchcock often makes humorous use of objects in the room, flooding the foreground with clever 3D objects, like lamps or flower vases, which add an extra layer of delight to this otherwise one-roomed apartment chamber drama.  Even as you watch the usual movie format, one recalls the use of 3D objects which are otherwise just decorative objects onscreen and part of the interior production design.  Adapted from a highly popular and successful play by the English playwright, Frederick Knott, where much like ROPE (1948), most all of the action takes place in a single living room in London, though shot completely on the Warner Brother’s studio lot in Burbank, yet still given that erudite, British murder mystery, whodunit style flair that Hitchcock relished.  This is the first of three films where Hitchcock used Grace Kelly, also REAR WINDOW (1954) and TO CATCH A THIEF (1955), perhaps the best example of a Hitchcock heroine, smart, gorgeous, and blond, retaining an icy cool demeanor that he must have loved to torture, as he was always tempted to break down that outer barrier of resistance, perhaps perfecting the technique with Tippi Hedron in The Birds (1963), forced to endlessly retake the gruesome final attack scene.  Hitchcock wanted to bring Kelly back for Marnie (1964), but that wasn’t possible once Prince Rainier of Monaco discovered the character she was supposed to play was a sexually repressed, compulsive liar and thief.  Here she is Margot, a deliciously lovely socialite, but a woman of independent wealth which in itself is an object of desire, where her beauty is often ignored as men typically struggle with their inner demons trying to refrain from their lust for money, where the temptation is often too great.  A great many dramas are framed around a love triangle, and this one is no different, one who cynically marries her for her money, Ray Milland as Tony, a former professional tennis player, something of a smooth talking charmer in the William Powell vein, a guy who loves to act with a drink in his hand, and Robert Cummings as Mark, who interestingly worked for Hitchcock a decade earier in SABOTEUR (1942), the young and impetuous lover who still believes in gallantry and noble ideas and brings out a more passionate side of Margot, perhaps his real crime in Mark’s eyes. 

In the opening sequence, Mark, a mystery crime writer and Margot’s supposedly secret lover, is arriving in London from America, ready to announce their unbreakable bond to Tony, but Margot hesitates, claiming Tony’s demeanor has changed, that he’s been more supportive.  No sooner do the words get out of her mouth than the real truth comes out, always over cocktails, where Tony whisks Mark and his unsuspecting wife off to the theater together in a supposed act of gentlemanly friendship, claiming he has too much work to catch up on, when really he has shady intentions, calling Captain Lesgate, aka Swann (Anthony Dawson), presumably to purchase a car.  Instead Tony goes on a lengthy ramble of deviously clever logic and meticulously accurate background storylines, all connecting Swann, a man of many aliases, to a nefarious underworld lifestyle of schemes and petty crimes, including a college class photo with a small group of friends, where Hitchcock is sitting proudly in the picture.  The gist of it all is Tony wants the man to kill his wife, proposing a supposedly foolproof plan that makes it sound almost too easy, where Tony stands to inherit a considerable fortune.  Threatened with exposure of his secretive lifestyle, Swann goes along with the obvious attempt at blackmail.  While the devil is in the details, this storyline is a motherlode of understated precision and detail, where the pace of the film unexpectedly moves straightaway to the crime itself just 45 minutes into the picture, a shocking revelation as this is usually reserved for the dramatic grand finale, but here it all happens before the midway point of the picture.  It’s a starkly dramatic moment where everything planned on paper takes on a completely different dimension in real life, where only the unexpected happens, turning this into a crime gone dreadfully wrong, something of a contrast to the way murder mysteries read in books, where outlandish crimes are committed seemingly at will, often with blood curdling results, the kind of thing that makes for excellent bedtime reading and was likely a preferred pastime of the master of suspense. 

The audience is likely taken aback by such a high level of tension at the midway point, where the rest of the film is the complete cover up and diversionary reinvention of the crime, where Tony manages to conceal and alter certain pieces of evidence before the police arrive, making it look like an attempted burglary, suggesting in his amusingly egoistic way that the thief was likely after his tennis championship trophies.  Despite his supposed dry and urbane demeanor, likely one of Milland’s best performances, the fun of the film is watching the swaggering confidence of the real murder instigator go through various transformations, where there’s never any doubt in his mind that he couldn’t pull off the perfect crime, always believing, up until the very final shot, that he can outwit the police.  Hitchcock takes a rather routine murder mystery and turns it into a tense psychological thriller, using the claustrophobic confines of the apartment to heighten the interior psychological suspense, constantly changing the multiple camera angles throughout, as Tony is continually called upon to re-examine the facts of the case.  Under the watchful eyes of a Scotland Yard Chief Inspector Hubbard, John Williams, the details take on an altogether different effect, continually changing the look of the crime.  The bright and very bold colors of Grace Kelly’s wardrobe in the opening are replaced by more somber colors at the end, where she is sent through the emotional ringer by the director, becoming a sobbing, incoherent jumble of nerves, the picture of chaos, utterly devastated by what happens to her, where Tony’s deliciously cool and suave indifference continually holds our interest, as his villainy is always bathed in artificial etiquette and social charm, suggesting the upper crust and best educated in the nation can devilishly use their learned knowledge and manner to constantly outwit an unsuspecting public who never see it coming.  But the Scotland Yard Inspector likely never went to Oxford, representing a more working man’s inquisitive presence, using a more dogged and workmanlike technique to catch a killer, where Hitchcock makes a clever dig at class differences, where the prevailing attitudes in Britain would likely favor the rich and the powerful, while a guy that tirelessly works for a living rarely earns their respect.

Pina in 3D

PINA IN 3D                            B+                  

Germany  France  Great Britain  (106 mi)  2011  d:  Wim Wenders 

There are situations that leave you utterly speechless. All you can do is hint at things.      

—Pina Bausch

While well-intentioned, to be sure, the idea of extending the use of 3D technology into the art film is getting ridiculous (see the photos of German Chancellor Angela Merkel adjusting her 3D glasses at the Berlin Festival premiere), as the fact remains very few films are the better for it, as the merit of a film continues to rise or fall based on the overall quality and essence of the film itself, not the use of technology, and this film is no different.  Wenders was intending a collaborative effort with internationally acclaimed dance choreographer Pina Bausch, the longtime director of the Tanztheater Wuppertal (since 1973), but she died just days after being diagnosed with cancer in 2009.  The film is very much a reverent eulogy to her memory, where one by one throughout the film members of the dance troupe are singled out, many offering a reflection on a particular moment they shared together, perhaps the moment they truly felt accepted, while others simply stare at the camera in silence.  One prominent theme advanced by many is the idea that language alone is limited, that dance, and art overall, is an extension of our capacity to understand and better appreciate human expression, that beginning with the dancers themselves, each is responsible for discovering that unique voice within themselves, captured through constant tinkering and experimentation with movement, so that each personality continually radiates their own personal vision while working within a larger dance ensemble.  This mix of individuality within a community of diverse dancers perhaps best expresses Bausch’s artistic vision, combining theatricality with dance, conveying universal expressions of loneliness and alienation with the need for intimacy, mixing sorrow with exhilaration and joy, often comically absurd but always intensely engaging.  Not so much interested in the movement, more so the idea and motivating force behind the movement, Bausch remains a visionary force with a demand for autobiographical truth and authenticity.   

Unlike Frederic Wiseman, Wenders never shoots an entire work uninterrupted from start to finish, but instead interweaves excerpts from four major works, never identifying them by name or the accompanying music, but they include Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, Café Müller, Kontakthof, and Vollmond (Full Moon), often mixing various stage works with what looks like variations on a theme using improvisational outdoor settings, where Wenders takes full advantage of the streets outside with the overhead tram passing by, including scenes from inside the tram car itself, or a countryside rock quarry, a public swimming pool, an empty, museum like all-window room with the view of a forest outside, a beautiful city park, a meditative lakeside shoreline, or various architectural settings, where the surprise element of dance being performed in a natural environment has a special appeal all its own.  What the outdoors also brings is extra light, making this much brighter than the usually darkened 3D experience.  While the music is consistently outstanding, Wenders blends various theatrical pieces, moving from indoors to outdoors, where there’s always a smooth transitional feel, constantly changing the dancers, the costumes, and the stage, where the focus keeps evolving, as if we’re part of a continuing drama that is playing out in human form.  In one of the more quietly intriguing pieces, featuring phenomenal physical dexterity, a woman crawls through a wooden chair on the floor as a man adds another chair on top of that one, which she steps through, continually adding chairs on top of that which she and another dancer safely climb through as the tower of chairs grows ridiculously high, needing a chair to stand on in order to place yet another chair high atop.  Whatever issues one may have with the tame or rather conventional manner of the filmmaking itself, leaving much unexplained and unfathomable, it is a joy from start to finish, as the dance onscreen is simply extraordinary and has rarely been presented with this degree of love and artistic beauty.  

We grow familiar with many of the dancers after awhile, probably picking out several favorites, where the diverse cultural background, as many as 17 different nationalities, includes European and Asian, also Central and South American, including indigenous natives, where many are naturally shy and weren’t sure what to expect from Bausch, who was a constant presence but rarely spoke to them, where one mentioned she uttered a single phrase to her in twenty years.  There’s an interesting mixture of young and old, as one dancer is the child of two original dancers, while Kontakthof has young dancers suddenly morph into another version of themselves as older people, still doing the same dance routine.  Café Müller, the dance of a blind woman in a room full of chairs, is beautifully featured, along with Bausch’s Masurca Fogo, in Almodóvar’s TALK TO HER (2002), a dance Bausch used to perform herself in the early 70’s (seen briefly), and receives an extended treatment here, something of a heartfelt homage to the man seen frantically removing the chairs who has now died as well.  The two pieces given the fullest expression are the opening and closing pieces, the violent, ritualistic battle of the sexes in Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, performed on several tons of dirt hauled onstage, an enthralling piece making use of a red scarf where a woman is sacrificed to a group of threatening men for the supposed good of the community, a precisely choreographed gang rape scene where you can hear the dancers panting audibly.  The closer is Vollmond (Full Moon), a jubilant work featuring a dozen or more different musical selections, given a modernistic twist, where a gigantic monolith style rock sits off to the side while the stage is beset by falling rain, where at first dancers playfully speed through the water with rowing sticks, eventually bellyflopping on their stomachs doing the breastroke, but eventually the dancers grab buckets of water to splash against the rock, where the spray comes flying off in a near waterfall effect, leaving everyone sopping wet.  Wenders has created a delightful if loosely structured piece that can be hypnotic at times, something of a dance mosaic weaving in and out of meticulous formations that is most fun when the dancers can simply let loose and inhabit new worlds.