Klimt

7:00pm Thursday Apr. 5, Vancity Theatre.

Far from a classical historical biopic, Raoul Ruiz’s warped take on the life of famed art nouveaux symbolist Gustav Klimt—here played by one John Malkovich—treats fin-de-siècle Vienna as a vibrant, lively painting waiting to be immortalized. Ruiz sees Klimt’s life as something deeply personal that can only be understood through the painter’s own eyes, and forges a feverishly stylish portrait of erotic deception and delusion, coming and going from Klimt’s death bed, through his studio, and into smoky Viennese cafes and high society. “The time portrayed in the film was one of the highlights of Viennese culture, which had burst onto the scene very quickly and in which the first seeds of decay were evident almost straight away, since such brilliance rarely lasts. We have Klimt, his private life, the world around him in all its splendour, but in the background we feel something malignant that quietly gains prominence, something contagious.”—Raoul Ruiz