Film Review: Gentle Meditation on Life in ‘Museum Hours’

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Average: 5 (1 vote)

CHICAGO – Jem Cohen’s “Museum Hours” is a lovely, almost calming meditation on life centered around an art museum with someone who spends a large portion of his life there and a traveler new to the building. Great art has the power to comment on life’s issues – sex, death, parenthood, religion, etc. – and Cohen uses the power of the still image to construct a film of moving ones with power of its own. It’s a deceptively simple film with deep things to say, buoyed by two great central performances, beautiful works of art, and a captivating rhythm that lulls one into consideration of their own life issues. At one point, our hero conveys the story of how noticing a frying pan in a Bruegel painting caused him to think about eggs and how he began to look for the round objects in other museum works. Before he knew it, an hour and a half had passed. “Museum Hours” has a similar pace, taking you from work to work, never underlining connected dots but allowing you to do so yourself. Before you know it, an hour and a half will pass.

HollywoodChicago.com Oscarman rating: 4.0/5.0
Rating: 4.0/5.0

Johann is a guard at the Kunsthistoriches Art Museum in Vienna, Austria. He has a gentle, peaceful demeanor, appreciating his job in ways that the students who he claims think only of parties that night or the people who have worked there too long do not. He can sit in his guard seat for hours or wander the museum, getting something new from a painting every day. Don’t worry. He’s not an overly effusive gentleman, who expresses his love for his job every day. He just seems to be someone comfortable in his skin and the world around him. He works, gets a drink, plays online poker, and does it again. He claims to not have man friends.

StarRead Brian Tallerico’s full review of “Museum Hours” in our reviews section.

Johann forms an unusual friendship with Anne, a Montreal woman forced to come to Vienna to visit a relative in a coma. She doesn’t know the area. She doesn’t know the language. She doesn’t know anyone, really. One day, in the museum, she’s looking at a map and Johann offers to help. He ends up serving as a translator for the doctors to her and just sitting with her for what seems like hours talking about art, life, and the city. He’s a unique tour guide in that he’s a detailed observer of life in the way he has observed the art he guards. And here’s where “Museum Hours” approaches masterpiece – he (and clearly Cohen) see art as a reflection of life and vice versa. The way Cohen composes shots of the city like paintings and the way Johann and Anne go from discussing painted works to people, architecture, themes, history – it’s all part of the same fabric.

StarContinue reading for Brian Tallerico’s full “Museum Hours” review.

“Museum Hours” stars Bobby Sommer and Mary Margaret O’Hara. It was written and directed by Jem Cohen. It will be released at the Music Box Theater on November 15, 2013.

Museum Hours
Museum Hours
Photo credit: Cinema Guild

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