arts & entertainment

Museum Piece

Jem Cohen's contemplative new film is a rich
tapestry of art history and human communication
set in a Vienna museum.

As with a fabric tapestry, one could turn
Museum Hours over to look at the com-
plicated weave of these elements; there is
he world is a palimpsest, a densely
Cohen's use of long takes with almost no
layered series of texts to be deci-
movement in the frame, often juxtaposed
phered and read by all who live
with extreme close-ups of the paintings, the
there. The sages of the Talmud seemed to
interplay of museum audio-guide recordings
think so, the great modernist Jewish writers
with hushed conversation, the profusion
surely thought so, and Jem Cohen, whose
of textures that he achieves with a deft mix
new film, Museum Hours, opens
of 8mm, 16mm, video and still
Aug. 1 at the Detroit Film Theatre,
photos.
clearly agrees.
You can see in the underlying
Although the film has as its
work a beauty of its own, inextri-
ostensible narrative arc the grow-
cable from and yet so dissimilar to
ing friendship between Johann
the image on the front side.
(Bobby Sommer), a guard in
Put it another way: At the cen-
Vienna's Kunsthistorisches
ter of the film's 106-minute run-
Museum, and Anne (Mary
ning time is a lengthy sequence,
Margaret O'Hara), a Canadian
perhaps as long as 10 minutes,
visitor who is tending to a dying
Filmmak er
of one of the museum's gallery
cousin, Museum Hours is really a
lecturers (Ela Piplits) talking about
Jem Coh en
complex tapestry of art, history
the work of Pieter Bruegel.
and communication, a quietly contemplative
She points out the extraordinary amount
essay on the richness of our hours.
of detail in his large canvases; the cornucopia
"Tapestry" is exactly the right metaphor
of ordinary human activity that is stuffed
for Cohen's film. Its fabric is an intricately
into the panoramas he presents; the way
woven creation that brings into play such
that the quotidian details overwhelm the
seemingly disparate elements as a Viennese
ostensible central events of a painting like his
flea market, the ride through a haunting
Conversion of St. Paul, in which the composi-
grotto, the vast array of world art history on
tion seems as much centered on a small boy
display in the museum, conflicts in Austria
playing at soldier in a grown-up's armor and
and the sense of estrangement that comes
a series of horses' posteriors as on the title
from being in a foreign city where the only
event.
person one knows is in a coma.
Finally, she invokes W.H. Auden's poem

George Robinson
Special to the Jewish Week

T

Musee des Beaux
Arts, in which
he famously
Bobby Summer (Johann) in Jem Cohen's Museum Hours
invokes the
painter's version
of the fall of Icarus, saying "... it takes place/
Cohen even manages to indirectly address
While someone else is eating or opening a
the commandment to rejoice with bride
window or just walking dully along:'
and groom when the gallery guide gives a
Cohen's approach to the film's narrative
delightful recounting of Bruegel's oil-on-
is every bit as indirect. Guided by Johann's
panel painting The Peasant Wedding (1567),
low-key narration, we learn of the mild ups
believed to be one of three Bruegel works
and downs of the guard's work life, his recol-
from around the same time, including The
lection of a former colleague who brought a
Wedding Dance (1566), owned by the Detroit
rather familiar quasi-Marxist interpretation
Institute of Arts and one of its most famous
to the collected wealth of the institution, the
attractions, and The Peasant Dance (1569),
amusing mental games he plays to keep him- also owned by the museum in Vienna.
self occupied during his long workdays.
There are no direct invocations of Judaism
The director juxtaposes an audio guide to
in Museum Hours. But the film is redolent of
the Book of the Dead with the proliferating
Jewish thought and, more important, beauti-
detritus of the flea market: the exposed cir-
fully festooned with a depth of feeling that is
cuitry of a disintegrated laptop, piles of mag-
belied by its seemingly cool tone.
azines and books that range from Franz Liszt
If Museum Hours isn't on my 10-best list at
to Donald Duck, an image of an old man try- the end of the year, then 2013 will have been
ing on abandoned shoes. Like so many of the one of the great film years of the new millen-
nium.
other elements of the film, the connection
shouldn't work; it's almost too pat. Yet it does,
The Detroit Film Theatre in the
in a deeply moving and satisfying way.
Detroit Institute of Arts screens
Above all, whether intentionally or not,
Museum Hours at 7 p.m. Friday and
Cohen seems to invoke a well-known pas-
Saturday, Aug. 1-2; 2 p.m. Sunday,
sage from the daily Shacharit service, which
Aug. 4; 9:30 p.m. Friday and
points to "obligations without measure" to
Saturday, Aug. 9-10; and 4:30 p.m.
welcome the stranger, to visit the sick, to
Sunday, Aug. 11. $6.50-$7.50. (313)
comfort the bereaved, all of which Johann
833-4005; tickets.dia.org .
will do for Anne.

❑

Jews

I

Nate Bloom
Special to the Jewish News

Royal Notes

Don't believe an email once again
going around the Jewish commu-
nity that Kate Middleton has Jewish
ancestry. It's made-up nonsense. She
doesn't.
But give some credit to Sam
Waley-Cohen ("SW-C"), 30, a great
friend of the couple
who invited them to
a 2007 party at his
family's mansion:
Will and Kate, then
broken up, reunited
romantically at the
party. SW-C is a top
ihk amateur steeple-
Waley-Cohen
chase jockey, and
the royals share
his enthusiasm for the sport. His
(Jewish) father and grandfather were

30

August 1 • 2013

knighted, and his (Jewish) mother's
father is a baron. By the way, SW-C
got a great seat at the couple's wed-
ding.

Addiction Stories

It's crystal-clear now that actress
Amanda Bynes, 27, who was very
sweet when I inter-
viewed her in 2007,
is suffering from
a severe mental
breakdown and prob-
ably has been using
street drugs. On July
22, she was arrested
for allegedly start-
Bynes
ing a gasoline fire
in the driveway of
someone she didn't even know. The
incident allowed police to put her
involuntarily in a mental hospital.
She fended off prior attempts by her
parents (her mother is Jewish) to get

her into treatment.
Although it seems unlikely now,
she could make a comeback.
Robert Downey Jr., who spent time
in state prison for drug use, cleaned
up in 2006, and Iron Man has turned
him into a mega-star.
Actress Natasha Lyonne, 34,
appears to be another "happy story."
While never a star,
Lyonne had a lot
of good adolescent
roles, including
playing a sharp-
tongued teen in the
first American Pie
movie. However,
from 2001-2007, she
Lyonne
had well-publicized
battles with hard-
drug substance abuse, was arrested
several times and almost died from
drug-related illness.
Since 2008, she's been clean and

has rebuilt her career on the stage.
Now she has a juicy co-starring role
in the new Netflix series Orange is
the New Black. All 13 episodes of
the first season were released for
Netflix online viewing on July 11, and
the series is already picked up for a
second season. Lyonne, in a case of
art imitating-life, plays a drug addict
who is the prison cellmate of the lead
character, Piper Chapman (played by
Taylor Schilling).
Lyonne recently spoke to Women's
Wear Daily, which described her as
"sober and very together." About her
character's relationship to her own
life, she told WWD: "In those reser-
voirs of pain that come with being
that self-destructive, also comes this
buoyancy and survival that comes
from what it's like to come out on
the other side. I feel lucky to be able
to inform the character with that
degree of honesty."

❑

