Friday 6 February 2015

The Great Museum



Out on Monday from Matchbox Films, this documentary The Great Museum directed by Johannes Holzhausen garners a release that may well push it to a wider audience.

This document is about the reopening of Kuntzhistorisches Museum in Vienna and it shares a bit of limelight with a similar film in this instance to Frederick Wiseman's National Gallery, which took the viewer behind he scenes of the London National Gallery.

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Whereas the latter film is marshalled by a veteran director, this film is shepherded by a director who is trying to show you things behind the scenes in a 'look at what I happened upon' and Wiseman has this way of being shot so unobtrusively the effect is far greater albeit both films are thematically the same.

That may do a discredit to the film which does have its moments such as when a worker speaks up at a meeting saying she has never met people from different departments, there is the potential for the director to follow that lady and make a socio-political comment on office politics and class hierarchies in the workplace and yet that employee is quickly forgotten about.

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Nevertheless the film should not be thought of as the Deep Impact to Wiseman's Armageddon or an Infamous to someone else's Capote; but rather another edition to the pantheon of documentary film about important buildings and what they stand for.  A document about life, art and the passion for both available in one place.

The Great Museum is out on DVD from Monday 9th February courtesy of Matchbox Films

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