Though he is still mostly known for his lyrical, America-set road movie Paris, Texas, which won the Palme d’Or in 1984, Germany’s Wim Wenders does most of his best work when he’s back on home turf.…
Film Festival, will not do much to generate a whole new audience for artist Anselm Kiefer; though his portfolio is astonishing — Shelley’s famous phrase “Look upon my works ye mighty and despair” comes to mind — it remains achingly oblique. Wenders gives context but never answers, and arguably it’s to his credit that he seeks to preserve those mysteries.
The allure of 3D for this is immediately obvious, notably when a ray of sunlight cuts through the trees, but the format comes into its own when Wenders takes us into Kiefer’s studio. The room is stuffed with paintings that hang in all directions, but when the artist cheerfully rides into frame on a bicycle, the sheer size and scale of the art becomes shockingly apparent.
As the film reveals, Keifer has been an artist for almost all his 78 years, showing precocious levels of talent at an early age. Born in the spring of 1945 in the Black Forest — five months before Wenders — he missed the bulk of the war but grew up to be fascinated by it, not just in the cycle of destruction and regeneration it caused but also in the psycho-geography of battlefields.
Nothing about his art is particularly figurative, and nor is it ‘easy’ by any metric; a particularly telling sequence sees the artist melting silver in a crucible and splashing it over a blackened canvas. Whether there’s a health and safety department nearby is never made clear, but it does show the level of risk and physicality involved here. It also raises questions about the boundaries of art, as Keifer’s portfolio seems to expand exponentially.
By the time film has brought us up to date, it’s hard to imagine seeing it in any format other than 3D for this reason alone, and iffails in broadening the reputation of its already internationally known subject, it’s an extraordinary post-pandemic endeavor that succeeds in reminding viewers of the thrill of being in the presence of great art.
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