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.
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.
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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