Gustav Mahler slips in and out of fantasy and memory on a train ride with his wife Alma on their way to Vienna. (I liked the segments on his childhood best.) Roger Powell as the protagonist bears a certain resemblance but hardly as close as some reviewers would have their readers believe. Despite spirited performances by Georgina Hale (as Alma) and Powell, this reviewer found the conversations between the famous pair on art, life, and love neither particularly deep nor riveting. This had a good side: it made the interludes of Russellian excess less distractions than diversions.
Nevertheless, though portrayal of Cosima Wagner as a bumping and grinding proto-Nazi might have been hilarious in the 50s, by the 70s it was banal. I felt sorry for Powell having to appear in the same scene. The sight of the newly Catholicized Mahler dining on hog's head is disgusting enough (for some reason I was even more put off by the way he avidly washed it down with milk chugged from a pitcher, blithely breaking the injunction against mixture of meat and dairy, of course). But for me the worst transgression was less blatant, and came when Russell had what looked like an oom-pah hofbrau band, but a marching one, play a passage from the third movement of the first symphony, apparently oblivious to its lilting klezmer echoes. Now that's what I call offensive.
Incredibly to me, some reviewers see this flick as Russell's best, a place I would give to "Gothic", in which the mix of fantasy, excess, and reality (history) jells to perfection. A six mainly because I have a soft spot for the subject matter.
Nevertheless, though portrayal of Cosima Wagner as a bumping and grinding proto-Nazi might have been hilarious in the 50s, by the 70s it was banal. I felt sorry for Powell having to appear in the same scene. The sight of the newly Catholicized Mahler dining on hog's head is disgusting enough (for some reason I was even more put off by the way he avidly washed it down with milk chugged from a pitcher, blithely breaking the injunction against mixture of meat and dairy, of course). But for me the worst transgression was less blatant, and came when Russell had what looked like an oom-pah hofbrau band, but a marching one, play a passage from the third movement of the first symphony, apparently oblivious to its lilting klezmer echoes. Now that's what I call offensive.
Incredibly to me, some reviewers see this flick as Russell's best, a place I would give to "Gothic", in which the mix of fantasy, excess, and reality (history) jells to perfection. A six mainly because I have a soft spot for the subject matter.