Raquel Buckley

Art 110 – Color 2D

Movie Review for Credit

Klimt (2006)

The movie Klimt opened with a montage of Gustav Klimt’s paintings. Panning upwards, the
camera showed Klimt’s painting Hygeia (1900-1907 – Destroyed by the Nazis in a fire in 1945
in Schloss Immendorf.) As the paintings appeared on the screen, so did the names of the actors
involved in the movie. I knew John Malkovich played Klimt, but seeing his name again on my
TV screen made me feel confident about the movie. I thought, "Great! I like John Malkovich."
The next scene showed Egon Schiele, Klimt’s protégé, in a waiting room of the hospital where
Klimt was on his deathbed.

The movie showed Klimt’s passion and his affluent lifestyle. It showed how in the early 19th
century, he was criticized for his paintings and drawings of beautiful naked women, for his
passion to draw and paint beautiful naked women and people's erotic nature. The movie
discussed how all his whims and fanciful irrational desires were tolerated and excused by his
wife as his “artistic eccentricities?”

The movie Klimt felt so strange to me. Although it was interesting to learn about Klimt’s
eccentricities, his odd lifestyle, and his bizarre family, I would’ve loved to see and learn more
about his artworks. I wish the movie showed more of Klimt’s art and more positive sides of his
personal character.

The movie did show small glimpses of Gustav Klimt’s art and his process on several occasions,
and I was glad about that. I assume the scene with women in a swing above water was his model
for his painting Water in Motion (1898). The other artwork that the movie showed was when he
was carefully laying down pieces of gold leaves on his art to create his now famous The Kiss
(1907). I learned that The Kiss was Klimt’s most celebrated painting. - fin -