{"id":3720,"date":"2014-10-22T07:15:56","date_gmt":"2014-10-22T11:15:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=3720"},"modified":"2015-01-03T07:19:22","modified_gmt":"2015-01-03T12:19:22","slug":"museum-hours","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=3720","title":{"rendered":"Museum Hours"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Pieter<\/a>

“The Peasant Wedding” by Pieter Bruegel (photo: wikimedia.com)<\/p><\/div>\n

Quick Netflix queue check: Is Museum Hours<\/em><\/a> on your list? (trailer<\/a>) If you put it there because you\u2019re looking for an alternative to the deafening noise and frantic pace of action movies, you have succeeded. This 2012 drama was directed by Jem Cohen, the award-winning creator of numerous films about punk rock musicians, including Patti Smith. I haven\u2019t seen those documentaries, but I\u2019m guessing the quiet and snail\u2019s pace of Museum Hours<\/em> is a significant departure that takes the meaning of \u201cart house film\u201d literally.<\/p>\n

Not overloaded with plot, the film includes lots of footage of paintings and sculpture and people looking at paintings and sculpture, a 15?-minute art appreciation monologue on the work of Pieter Bruegel, the point of which was that, in the panoply of people he scatters across his canvases, he doesn\u2019t direct the eye to any single place. You can pick your own center. Each person portrayed is potentially equally important, regardless of the putative \u201csubject\u201d of the work.<\/p>\n

That seems to be the Cohen\u2019s point, too. That the two characters\u2014a woman visiting Vienna to attend her comatose cousin\u2014and a museum guard she meets by happenstance, are two random people and subjects as worthy of exploration as anyone else. That\u2019s my guess, anyway.<\/p>\n

Only three real speaking parts, all performed superbly: the guard, the out-of-towner, the museum lecturer. Not the comatose cousin. Much of the movie was filmed in Vienna\u2019s Kunsthistorisches Museum. New York Times<\/a><\/em> reviewer A.O. Scott gave it 5 stars and called it \u201cquietly amazing, sneakily sublime.\u201d Rotten Tomatoes<\/a> called it \u201ca mesmerizing tale.\u201d Mesmerized, I fell asleep (briefly). Critics rating 94% — Audience: 59%. Like visiting an art museum without leaving home.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Quick Netflix queue check: Is Museum Hours on your list? (trailer) If you put it there because you\u2019re looking for an alternative to the deafening noise and frantic pace of action movies, you have succeeded. This 2012 drama was directed … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Museum Hours","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[57,104],"tags":[417],"class_list":["post-3720","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movies","category-the-morgue","tag-film"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-Y0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3720"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3720\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3721,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3720\/revisions\/3721"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}