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The best documentaries about artists use the visual power of history to give us a unique appreciation of the look and feel of their work, while also capturing the depth of their soul and their connection to history. . Last year’s “All the Beauty and the Bloodshed,” Laura Poitras’ film about the life and work of activist/artist Nan Goldin, and 2011’s “Pina,” a film by Wim Wenders is the actress Pina Bausch, who comes to mind, it’s all gone. the parameters of an input image are input directly into the work itself. These films, too, stand as powerful works of art in their own right.
Wenders now returns to the realm of 3D documentary that he so beautifully inhabited with “Pina” to explore the works of the 78-year-old artist and sculptor Anselm Kiefer. Not a historical story, “Anselm” is a philosophical interpretation of an artist in the process of work, where he struggled with his own place in the political history of history. of Germany.
This highly technical but visually appealing commentary argues that Kiefer is one of the few German artists, living or dead, to look unflinchingly at his nation’s dark history and obsession with evil. The empty spaces where the dead once lived are inspired by natural landscapes, and his sculptures and paintings are often made of raw materials, debris, and scrap metal that evoke the horrors of World War II. .
It is certain that “Anselm” does not try to admire us in his subject, who is often arrogant, selfish, and does not seem like a pleasure to work with. The poem of the Roman-Jewish writer in the German language Paul Celan does not like his work and seems to be a kind of north star for Kiefer, who almost murmurs in the voice that thought if he and nazi. was born early. (The words of famous Nazi philosopher Martin Heidegger also made their way into the film.)
Kiefer was born in 1945, just a few months before VE Day, while Wenders was born not long after, so it is easy to see the simpatico they share as German artists often do. based on the dark history of their country. (They’ve been trying to make this film since the 1990s.) That simpatico can’t be caught on camera, because Wenders doesn’t insert himself into the documentary or offer the more of an important view or idea.
However, the foundation of Wenders is a historical story that is shown here in a curious and researched film shot in 6K 3D. “Anselm” follows a path tracing Kiefer’s life, from being born in a bombed-out town in the Black Forest to studying romantic languages at university and finally started his own studio in the early 1970s. But Wenders’ film is a poem, however beautiful, right down to the ASMR-inducing sounds of whispers, spoken words, and some of Kiefer’s own thoughts: “Society was silent all that time, they could not understand the unimaginable.”
The piece de resistance of the film is a kind of long vacation in La Ribaute, the apotheosis of the Kiefer vision and 200-acres outside Barjac in the Cévennes in France. What used to be a silk factory, is now a steampunk-like arrangement of stone buildings, grain mills, and factories that have housed his works for years. Wenders is more interested in exploring the topography of Kiefer’s landscape, less in the spirit of his subject, even if it is literally poured onto the canvas. In La Ribaute, Wenders and filmmaker Franz Lustig use the power of 3D to show us all aspects, indeed, of Kiefer’s work. But I want to know, to watch the film in 2D, because the display on a non-IMAX screen darkens and blurs the image, which is usually the problem with 3D in general.
Wenders loses focus when trying to recreate moments in Kiefer’s life, which has the far-reaching effect of throwing you into a whole other movie. “Anselm” does not question the merit of the controversial artist in the world of art as one of its rich practitioners. That’s what got him to build La Ribaute in the first place, where his assistants used some really hard tools to put things together. What we are left with is a vague picture of the artist as a person, but certainly a clear picture of the person.
Grade: B-
“Anselm” is currently playing in select theaters from Sideshow and Janus.