| RATING: | 100% |
| FORMAT: | Cinema |
Looking more like John Lennon than Gustav Mahler, Robert POWELL dominates this film as he should as its eponymous Jewish hero.
Carefully composing and structuring the film to maximum effect to bring out the creative process of its central character, the film's director (Ken Russell) also reveals his own as well as a much needed playfulness to avoid the usual over-seriousness of movies about classical composers. Shot like a silent movie there is a clever and rather beautiful marriage of image and sound and symbolism that gets beyond words as the best music does. The sort of thing that a movie like Fantasia abjectly failed to do.
The anti-Semitism of White culture against which he is always pitted to achieve success in that culture is well presented by being ridiculed. While also being used to explain the strength of Jewish culture as against Christian and the desire of the latter to be agreed with in exchange for social acceptance.
The solitude of the artist is played-up to explain that he must partly escape worldly concerns to paradoxically achieve a fuller connection to himself and the world. As well as to explain why he could never treat his wife as his creative equal or, indeed, as creative at all. Played by Georgina HALE she is both sexy and funny while ultimately sad.
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