I decided to rent this movie because there was a label on its cover - "WINNER. Moscow International Film Festival. Best Film" (distributed by KOCH Lorber Films, KLF-DV-3151). Technically it's not a lie - it's just misleading. The "Klimt" movie was a winner in a much smaller competition - "Russian Film Clubs Federation Award for Foreign Films" (there are a lot more prizes at this festival - Golden St.George, Silver St.George and so on). No more awards for this movie, and it reflects its light caliber.I didn't like this movie, and I have to say I admire Klimt paintings. I don't think that Klimt was so stiff and also sleepy. There is much more life in one simple photograph from the artist Wiki page, than in this whole movie. All these endless camera rotations around subjects! And too much too loud music... And actually an absence of scenario...They tried to sell this movie to public - nudes, decadent atmosphere, this misleading label. The ratings show that they failed... I give it 5 for some visual enjoyment I had... and some women hats there were really-really amazing!

While the world relaxed and enjoyed itself between wars. When art was a solitary and experimental endeavor. When Europeans rediscovered the power of nature in sex and in some cases the other way around. When lives really could be deep, and debauched and intelligent too, three men came out of Vienna: Freud and Wittgenstein were two of them. There may have not been such a concentration of greatness for many decades before and until the Fasori Gimnázium, also under by then slippery Austrian rule. There's a commonality among those two and Klimt, and even between them and the more cerebral Budapest next generation. Its a matter of passion, sense (in both meanings) and concept curvature. While the two great art nouveau geniuses were wondering about space in Brussels and Barcelona, Klimt worked his space, curvature ans escape from the inside of women. Lots of women. His work is of that type that is immediately attractive, so lots of people decorate with it. A brief familiarity with it breeds confusion, so unless you dig as deeply in viewing as he did in making, it will not connect. As a result, if you are serious about making a film of him, about him, you simply cannot do the normal thing: somehow artificially inducing drama into portraying a few known events. You cannot do what Greenaway did with Rembrandt, simply showing sexual passion and making the film painterly.So along comes Ruiz, who is a strange bird, very much like Klimt. There's no middle familiarity with him. Either you know him deeply, you wrap your life where he has, or you miss the passion. You think him dull. You actually believe that someone would spend this much energy fine tuning the ordinary. Well, the thing about these three men is that they were their own worst critics. They all three created their own new worlds were none was before, worlds so perfect and pure anyone of lesser power would be unable to break them. Then they each turned on their own creation, finding and exploiting the weaknesses of their own creations, selves and now us. The art is not in the man but in how he made himself broken.Look at each of them and see the beauty in partial dismemberment. Ruiz denotes this at the beginning with otherwise inexplicable, powerful amputee sex. As with Ruiz' best work, people act as others, split selves, whores of themselves, auditors and bureaucrats of sex. Love must be dissymmetric. Narrative to have power must be a bit jagged inside, where you want to go.I admit, I think Malkovich was a bad choice. He really can be dull. But he is supposed to stagger through this, finding puddles of warm light, clean frames or open enclosure. The women are the thing, always the thing here and they are drawn well.Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

I had the chance to see this long awaited movie on cable TV and I thought it would be interesting when I realized it was directed by Chilean-french art film director Raul Ruiz. Nevertheless it turned out to be a complete bore, absurdly pretentious and wrongly rupturist, perhaps taking too much for granted on Ruiz well-known abstract cinematic style and nothing to provide information on this very influential and important painter. John Malkovich repeats himself on a role that doesn't demand for any psychological progression due to a self indulgent non linear narrative that fails completely in attempting to portray the tormented life of the Austrian artist. Ruiz's style to film might be interesting for another kind of movies in which you don't need to illustrate facts of life or narrate biographic events. In this film he seems to be an accurate expert on the European description of intellectuals and artists belonging to the 20th century, but still he cannot give a coherent description of Gustav Klimt's eccentric life.

I am a very generous person when it comes to criticism. But seriously... I expected to learn something about this man and walked away confused and emotionally dead...actually, quite frustrated. Perhaps I'm spoiled by films that have a plot and films that clearly let you know why a character is doing something. I had no idea why Klimt was doing ANYTHING. What did he want? Who did he want? I understand very, very little about this man and what he cared about and what motivated him. Every female character looked too much like the other, I couldn't even tell who the object of his desires was! I'm actually considering another 20 minute bike ride in the past-midnight Tokyo winter to rent another film just to leave myself satisfied...Jeez...