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| Director Wim Wenders |
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| Wenders with Anselm Kiefer |
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| 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)
