Museum Hours

“Can a painting really be timeless? They carry their time along with them don’t they? Though much of it falls off along the way, like dirt from a turning wheel." When watching Museum Hours I get the sense that I’ve had the great fortune of fading into a Bruegel painting. As the Kunsthistorisches Museum tour guide (Ela Piplits) thoughtfully beckons a group through the establishment’s wooden floors we are awarded the privilege of hearing the quiet creaks of each step made by its visitors. In this bountiful landscape we are not told how to think, feel, or see, instead, we are invited to choose our own centre of gravity amidst an array of images seized by Cohen himself.

Facts are folded with fictions in a narrative surrounding two new friends Johann and Anne. This indelible on-screen pairing features performances by legends Mary Margaret O’Hara and Bobby Sommer. This is not a film about romance though but a story about how a true friendship can be enveloped in it. The selfless gestures of care and empathy offered by both are some of the finest I have ever felt. The interweaving of reality and re-invented historical spaces which are carried off of canvases allow us to witness conversations which are delicate and devastating. O’Hara and Sommer are infinitely generous in their improvised performances and present their own dialogues in the ornate winterscape of Vienna. Simply, this is an enduring film about two brave hearts who carry their pasts with levity and light.
 

Sofia Bohdanowicz
Filmmaker