Film Review: Anselm, Directed by Wim Wenders
Wim Wenders’s Exploration of Anselm Kiefer Comes Just When We Need It Most: a beautiful dance between art and humanity
⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐
Review by Sierra Brown-Rodrigues
Just when it seems that the rest of the film world has forgotten about the marvels of 3D cameras, Wim Wenders finds himself in Barjac, France, embarking on a cinematic journey. Filmed in 3D and 6K, Wenders finds himself interwined with German conceptual artist, Anselm Kiefer in this beautiful, artistic documentary.
The film, named after the artist, is less of a biographical documentary and more of a cinematic exploration of his body of work. The information we are privy to about Kiefer is woven through symbolic paradoxes between himself and his art. He allows his work to tell his tale, and vice versa.
Throughout the film, there are two key influences that find themselves at the forefront of his art: Paul Celan, a German-Jew poet who wrote of the Holocaust as it was unfolding before him, and Martin Heidegger, a famous German philosopher who, despite his notably, failed to ever acknowledge his participatory acts during the war.
The entirety of the film feels candid and intimate, as if we’ve entered the mind of Kiefer himself. We’ve been granted access to both his past and presence, watching (or perhaps trespassing) on one man’s journey of self-reflection.
Wenders brilliantly interweaves a younger Keifer with his present self, using overlapping imagery to trick the viewer's eyes, suggesting that perhaps our past and present exist as one - that we never really stray from our younger selves but rather spend our existence searching for them.
‘Meditative’: Anselm
The film is an immersive experience that leaves you feeling as if you’ve visited Keifer’s studio yourself. That you’ve smelt the fire burning his canvases or watched as his team melts metal in a ceremony of art. Wender plunges us into the world of Anselm Kiefer by indulging us in cinematic shots of the work, an artist crippled by the “open wound” of Germany’s political and social history.
However beautiful and aesthetic the film is, Wenders doesn't shy away from the politics and societal commentary of Keifer’s work. Wenders isn’t submissive in his approach, he knows that to present Kiefer in any sort of authentic and meaningful way he must touch on the controversial aspect of his works, specifically his reckonings with the Holocaust, and World War 2.
This exploration into the catalogue of Kiefer’s works comes at a rather interesting time, a time on the verge of another war, a time where it seems Western media has chosen to cower rather than fight.
Kiefer's stance has always been clear when you examine his wider works: he sees individualism as a poison, as a way for people to convince themselves they are better than they maybe really are - to convince themselves they would have been part of the heroic resistance.
Shot of Kiefer walking through his estate in the south of France: Anselm.
His work is full of ruminations about national identity, of attempting to dismantle his country’s collective amnesia of the Nazi rule by reconstructing the horrors of his motherland’s history through multimedia mediums. He explores the paradoxical relationship of reality and myth, using it as a compass to navigate the weight of the past.
Wenders does an excellent job of visually portraying what it seems it would be like to step foot inside Kiefer’s mind, cutting between close-ups of Kiefer's paintings to long shots of the landscape which inspired Kiefer.
If you were looking for an autobiographical history of Kiefer and his works this film might not be for you - there’s little dialogue and explanations, and the information we do get is told almost as a wives’ tale rather than fact.
However, if you’re interested in diving into an immersive experience of Kiefer's work told through the beautifully shot lens of Wenders, I couldn’t recommend this more. The film is as ravishing as it is revolutionary, coming at a time when we need it most.