Museum Hours--a masterpiece
In 2 days I’ve seen 2 films by directors with the same sounding name. Inside Llewyn Davis was directed by the Coen brothers. We saw a sneak preview at the Block Cinema in Evanston Thursday night for FREE. Crazy. Then the next night we caught Museum Hours (by the director Jem Cohen) also at the Block. The same student was there taking tickets as the night before. I asked him how he’d liked Inside Llewyn Davis and he answered: bleak. I think I could agree with that assessment. Museum Hours was a visual masterpiece. Like most memorable art, it was a revelation of the ordinary. Whitmanesque. Cities of “hurrying, feverish electrical crowds.” “Never was there, perhaps, more hollowness at heart than the present.” (Democratic Vistas, 1871) Just as Whitman represented ordinary American life pre-20 th C, this film displays the hollowness of the post 20 th C. Ugly, urban landscapes beneath winterish bleach skies devoid of a sun. A film or haze settles over the city of Vien...