ANSELM

Directing: C+
Cinematography: B+
Editing: C+
Music: B

It’s not often that the experience of a film so closely resembles getting a dose of chloroform. I suppose that’s hyperbole, but I was certainly sedated. I truly could not keep myself awake during Anselm.

Art is subjective, right? I hesitate to say this makes Anselm a bad movie. And there were moments, when I managed to stay awake, that I was genuinely astonished and amazed. Anselm Kiefer, a German painter and sculptor who is now 79 years old, is seen in this film working on many of his countless works of art—this guy is incredibly prolific. And makes tactile, three-dimensional pieces on canvases so huge, often twice his height and double again the width, that countless of his pieces are seen, both stored and in progress, in a gigantic warehouse. He gets around the space riding on a bicycle.

In one sequence, Kiefer is seen melting metals down into liquids, then pouring it from a bucket—using a pulley system operated from a safe distance—directly onto a canvas lying flat on the floor. It’s genuinely fascinating, and makes you yearn to find the finished piece, wherever it is now, and touch it. In fact, Kiefer evidently has so many pieces in a quasi-abstract style that is very much my jam, I would be first in line to an exhibit were I to find out there was one near me. Seeing the art in person, I am sure, would be very stimulating indeed, on both visual and tactile levels.

Which is all to say, I don’t think my response to the film Ansel has anything to do with Ansel Kiefer at all. Rather, it has to do with the film’s director Wim Wenders, who once made a name for himself with eighties films like Paris, Texas and Wings of Desire. And, to be fair, the critical consensus with Anselm is very high praise indeed—and I don’t begrudge anyone responding to this film in such a way. Still, I have to speak my truth, and my truth is that this movie literally sedated me.

It’s not like I was operating on lack of sleep or anything. I was perfectly alert before going into the theater, and woke right up when the movie ended (when I was also relieved it was over). There’s something about the smooth, gliding movements of the camera as it passes through Kiefer’s works of art, alternating between a soothing, quiet score, and much longer shots of total silence. It’s the visual equivalent of being rocked to sleep.

The theater where I saw this movie, at 7:30 on a Friday night, was surprisingly full, and I found myself looking around to see if I could get any sense of how the rest of the audience was reacting to it. I couldn’t tell if anyone else was nodding off, but it did strike me that I could not hear anyone eating popcorn. It did feel like, in one way or another, the rest of the audience was also being put under some kind of spell.

It should be noted, also, that Anselm is being presented in 3D. I feel compelled to mention the 2012 documentary Pina, featuring dance tributes to German choreographer Pina Bausch. That film was also presented in 3D, the first documentary feature I had ever seen in that format, and I was truly blown away by it, completely held in its thrall. I actually came to Anselm with Pina very much in mind, thinking: if a documentary must be presented in 3D, an examination of art is the way to do it. How much closer can you get to feeling like you’re in the same room with it, without actually being there?

The stark difference really comes down to tone. Pina was a film of action, a kind of documented series of interpretive dances. Anselm, by contrast, is a visual catalog of stationery objects. I don’t dislike museums, but they do have a tendency to tire me out surprisingly quickly; I get fatigued, as though all that art has tested the limits of my brain function. This was essentially my response to Anselm, just much more severe. I hadn’t been this powerless to sleep since I was anesthetized for a colonoscopy.

My best theory is that it simply had to do with the environmental context: a movie that lulled me to sleep, the 3D format giving it a heightened realism, in a very dark movie theater. I suspect this film, ironically, might be more effective seen in 2D at home. If nothing else, it introduced me to an artist I had never heard of, whose art itself I actually love.

I didn’t actually want to take a nap, I swear!

Overall, what I actually saw: B-