User Reviews

i have always been a fan of Malkovich's work but this one is a real stinker despite the good effort and the risks Saffron Burrows took for her role in the movie. the director's did a poor job since the film doesn't hold up or live up to the fame of artist. there is no opening shots,, the first scenes are so behind the purpose of the story.. the soundtracks were another failure by the director... the camera-work is odd and pointless and in no way helps the watcher follow the storyline,, the script is another stinker as its cheesy and odd (bad odd). overall, the film is not worth your while and watching for the purpose of knowing more about the artist is pointless since it will do nothing but misguide you ( you better off reading his book)... i would not suggest anyone to watch this film unless you are a die-hard fan of Saffron Burrows and wants to see more of her.

Being John Malkovich was one of, if not the, strangest movies I have ever seen. Klimt is similarly strange, but not quite that strange. Like Russell Crowe's John Nash in A Beautiful Mind, Klimt hallucinates people, and in a similar way, you, in the audience are just as confused about who is real and who is imaginary. You are only gradually let in on understanding this.

The movie is decorated with dozens of naked women who mainly parade about, or who try to seduce Klimt. Given that he is not particularly handsome, charming or intelligent, I failed to see the attraction. Perhaps it was just his fame as a painter.

The interiors and costumes are opulent turn of the century Vienna. Elaborate Viennese pastries tempt the eye. The sets are the main appeal of the movie.

There is a lot of cat and mouse dialogue where the characters reveal nothing and say nothing while attempting to sound profound. It is all quite frustrating.

Nikolai Kinski plays the homosexual painter Egon Schiele in an exaggeratedly swish way, reminiscent of Da'an's hand gestures in Earth Final Conflict.

The costumes and hair treatments are so elaborate, that I could not for the life of me tell the female characters apart. Is this a new character or an old one in a new do? The characters all behave the same way and look similar. I didn't develop any bond with any of the characters because I could not even tell them apart.

I get it. It's a cinematic version of a 12-tone piece of music. You can enjoy the sounds, but unless you're privy to the artist's contrived intentions, it's a gobbledy-gook mess. Not the worst movie I've ever seen - the costuming and scenery/sets are lovely.

I was really hoping I could enjoy the film DESPITE John Malkovich; really the only film I like the man in is Being JM because it pokes fun at his ridiculous persona that pervades every character he portrays.

The only reason I kept watching was the hope of being thrown a lifesaver of a shred of a story. I will agree that Kinski and the exotic women of the movie are the brightest spots. I wished the movie had been "Schiele" and revolved more around Kinski. JM as Klimt is about as bland as stale toast.

"I want to wash out my brain." "Did I miss something or did this film stink?" Comments heard on exiting the screening of "Klimt" at the Siskel Film Center, Chicago July 4, 2007

Hunter S. Thompson blew the journalistic world away by openly reporting events through the prism of his own drug-soaked experience. Terry Gilliam's cinematic portrayal of this in "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" conveyed this brilliantly.

So far as I know, Gustav Klimt did not portray his artistic vision in an ether-soaked stupor or in a state of syphilitic delirium. My problem with Mr. Ruiz portraying him as though he did is that Klimt actually led an exuberant revolutionary artistic movement in a city and continent exploding with creative energy, and this portrayal could hardly be farther from the truth. Even a non-linear poetic portrayal of the creative process should shed some truth on its essence.

The tone of the movie was static, suffocating, semi-conscious and joyless. Klimt's life was full of color, sexual experimentation and living life to its fullest, so it additionally seems odd that John Malkovich sleepwalks through his performance with less joy than Rod Steiger in "The Pawnbroker."

If Mr. Ruiz wanted to make a film about a fever-dream (Klimt died of pneumonia following a stroke, not of tertiary syphilis as suggested in the film), perhaps he should have entitled it "Fever-Dream: with a whimsical guest appearance by my fantasy of Gustav Klimt."

This film may be of use to film students to prove that images and sound do not automatically add up to a movie.

The only thing that kept me in my seat after 20-30 minutes of watching 'Klimt' was that I was too near the middle of the row to leave without making a fuss. However, a quick look around me revealed more dozers, whisperers, shufflers and people with either stupefied or plain bored faces than I have ever seen.

Why? In a few words, this film is pretentiousness trying to play sophistication, clog-footed hamminess trying to play world weariness, gaucheness trying to play 'shocking', quirky 'cleverness' trying to play depth. John Malkovich's role was about as three-dimensional as a flake of peeled varnish. Was Klimt really a dead-eyed deadpan wimp who finished every sentence by showing 'bunny teeth', and who felt the need to overcompensate for being pathetic through occasional bouts of utterly hammy laughable violence (on streets ankle deep in salt) and endless humorless sexual encounters? (Perhaps the only understanding the producer showed of the audience is their profound disinclination to have to witness someone as fundamentally unsexy engaged in such.) Don't expect to get any insights into Klimt past what you could read on Wikipedia. About the only thing that warrants the use of the artist's name as the title is the occasional appearance of gold leaf, egg whites, lips and black lace. Apart from that it may as well be called 'Let's Go Loony with a Bland Old F**kwit'.

The delivery was stilted, the acting was twee, and some of the devices used, e.g. spinning the camera round and round the subject to create a dizzying background vortex, were way too conscious - not to mention simply annoying. There were many scenes where you really felt as if your sensibilities (not in the prudish sense, just as in what passes score and what doesn't) as well as intelligence were being roundly assaulted in a totally crass and meaningless way. Two examples that come to mind are the ranting, dribbling raver and Klimt's ludicrously distressed mother and "Ooh, mom's at it - s'pose I'd better join in too" sister. It was like watching a town hall production by people who don't get out enough.

Shame on everyone involved in this movie. I have never been more disappointed at the cinema. It lacked any humanity; it was wooden and unconvincing. It is pernicious as a credible plea for censorship. I gave it a 2 instead of a 1 because, if nothing else, to a certain extent you have to admire gall.

So do not waste your money on this film ... and whatever you do - DO NOT TAKE A DATE!

Like other reviewers I expected more from this film and left the cinema both angry and annoyed at the historical inaccuracies regarding Klimt's life and death. These are the aimless meanderings of a film director who clearly disappeared into his own orifice and where the sun doesn't shine. Klimt is represented as a neurotic diseased immoral individual which could not be further from the truth if you research his life. I've always regarded John Malkovich as an overrated Ham with a decidedly creepy persona evident in all his films and been continually astonished at his selection for almost all of his roles. The other reviewers are right - this one is a stinker and the artist Klimt deserves a better epitaph.

KLIMT:A Viennese Fantasy à la manière de Schnitzler is a controversial film, a montage of the elements of the art world and the sociopsychological tenor of the times of the infamous fin de siècle in Europe, a period greatly influenced by the writings of Sigmund Freud, thee novels and 'performances' of Arthur Schnitzler that focused on the emergence of the new views of sexuality. Being about the rise of sensualism in art and the subsequent Jugenstil (Art Nouveau) and Vienna Secessionist movement, writer director Raúl Ruiz (with aid from Herbert Vesely and Gilbert Adair) has painted a larger than life canvas of this fascinating period in art and in history in general and happens to populate it with significant character from the period. No, the film is not based on hard facts and yes, there are inconsistencies throughout. But that is of less importance than the allure of the period that very successfully comes through this film using the magic of light and the fluidity of the camera.

Gustav Klimt (1862 - 1918) was a strange artist, a man who believed in a sensualist artificial religion and an artist who favored erotic imagery in his canvases. He was controversial in his time, yet today his paintings using gold leaf and silver leaf and design patterns of expression that defined Art Nouveau sell for many millions of dollars: his style is still imitated and he is still celebrated as the father of erotic art. The film opens and closes with Klimt (John Malkovich) submerged in healing waters in a rather stark hospital, attended by a nurse and his disciple, the equally sensational Egon Schiele (Nicolai Kinski, keeping his hands in the spread-finger style Schiele painted so often!). From this point bits and pieces of Klimt's bizarre life are explored, at times explained through imaginary conversations with his secretary (Stephen Dillane). His marriage, his 'affair' - or is it simply a manifestation of the influence of a muse? - with Lea de Castro (Saffron Burrows), his self indulgence in all things erotic (he is said to have has many affairs with Viennese women yielding a large number of children who bear his genetic puzzle), and his conflict with the Academy of Art, a sense of disgust with the current oeuvre of painting as sterile, and his prodigious output of paintings and drawing of the female nude - all are depicted with tremendous imagination here. The cinematography is as strange as the story it captures, using falling snowflakes in one scene to suggest the falling pieces of Klimt's gold leaf enhancement of his most famous works in others.

The dialogue is at times raw and at other times superficial and the audience is begged to indulge in the fantasy that is being recreated. But the film stands well as an example of an art history period and John Malkovich makes a credible Klimt. This is more a film for art students and art lovers who are eager to explore the beginnings of Art Nouveau than a film for audiences eager for accurate biography.

Grady Harp

what a stinker! i went to see this new movie with the best intentions. what could go wrong? it was an austrian-British co-production about an artist i like who painted sexy pictures, and it starred john malkovitch.

well, everything went wrong. perhaps the director thought that in portraying an artist who defied conventions, it is a good idea to defy cineastic conventions. so there is no real storytelling, there are no opening shots, and the sound is clinical horror of over- synchronized voices with ever-dominant emotive music. however, instead of replacing conventions with the bold and new, the director uses theatrical clichés -- a shot of blood&sex here, broken glass there, some fistfights and some insanity, and an overdose of flashbacks.

and there is talk, so much talk!, and the talk is boring. is art truth? should art be new? must the artist be insane? the topics are OK but there is nothing original to be found here, nothing witty or even mildly humorous. if you know an odious person who likes to speak through his nose about how Art is Good and Society is Bad: he may well enjoy this movie. but i found it as annoying as hell.

Those who find this movie boring, even terrible, are probably not familiar with post-modern cinema. This is not a Hollywood classic recipe movie, it is an post-modern art film that relies on poetry and a reference system to other pieces of art to give meaning to symbols.

Concerning one of the uncultivated commenters who thought that there was too much "talk, talk, talk", well that part was meaningful and well done. It portrayed the pedantic falsely deep talk of that particular social class in that particular era, and at the same time show Klimt's point of view on it.

As another commenter said, bad scores to this movie is not about the movie but more about the viewer. Not because you don't understand references and are not used to that kind of movie that it is bad.

I'm sorry but I thought the film Klimt was the worst film I have ever seen about an artist - John Malkovich doesn't even approach a resemblance to Klimt - I can forgive mis-casting however but Mr. M decided to play the role with a monotone voice throughout the ENTIRE film - it was awful - although it is true that not much is known about Klimt (biographical detail comes from second hand information such as correspondence) but to play this role comatose was none too inspiring - there was nothing - nothing - about the climate he during the fin de siècle Vienna - nothing about the scandalous Faculty paintings or the Vienna Secession, his friend Emilie Flöge who eventually owned a fashion house, etc. etc. - There is so much that could have been included in the film to give one a sense of the time and where he was placed in it - Instead Malkovich walks around like he's in a stupor - Don't waste your money

This is surely one of the best movies about art I've ever seen. It manages to surprise on many different levels. It avoids completely biographical approach which is a main starting point for most movies of this kind of subject. Even paintings are very few to be seen. Instead, the movie concentrates on something, which is far more essential - the state of the mind of the artist. I was astonished how close the movie was to the feeling I have got from the paintings by Klimt. It also captures the special a kind of decadent flavor of the end of a historical (Austrian-Hungarian empire) as well as an artistic epoch. But it also captures something, which could be called the inner world of the artist and does it in a convincing and magnificent way. Therefore it far exceeds a mere depiction of the life and art of Gustav Klimt - it's not movie about art but an artwork itself. And it's an artwork which is very close to the artworks by the hero of this movie - dreamy and magical, exuberant and saturated with symbols.

The first time I saw it, it was a sheer pleasure for senses. The music is one of the best movie scores I've ever heard - full of references toward the works by Berg, Mahler and Richard Strauss, which contribute in a hypnotic way to the overall effect of this movie. But because the movie is so rich and full of connotations and details one cannot grasp by first viewing, it made me want to watch it many times more. And if somebody found it boring - sorry, but this says probably more about the viewer than about the movie.

10 out of 10

While the world relaxed and enjoyed itself between wars. When art was a solitary and experimental endeavor. When Europeans rediscovered the power of nature in sex and in some cases the other way around. When lives really could be deep, and debauched and intelligent too, three men came out of Vienna: Freud and Wittgenstein were two of them. There may have not been such a concentration of greatness for many decades before and until the Fasori Gimnázium, also under by then slippery Austrian rule.

There's a commonality among those two and Klimt, and even between them and the more cerebral Budapest next generation. Its a matter of passion, sense (in both meanings) and concept curvature. While the two great art nouveau geniuses were wondering about space in Brussels and Barcelona, Klimt worked his space, curvature ans escape from the inside of women. Lots of women.

His work is of that type that is immediately attractive, so lots of people decorate with it. A brief familiarity with it breeds confusion, so unless you dig as deeply in viewing as he did in making, it will not connect. As a result, if you are serious about making a film of him, about him, you simply cannot do the normal thing: somehow artificially inducing drama into portraying a few known events. You cannot do what Greenaway did with Rembrandt, simply showing sexual passion and making the film painterly.

So along comes Ruiz, who is a strange bird, very much like Klimt. There's no middle familiarity with him. Either you know him deeply, you wrap your life where he has, or you miss the passion. You think him dull. You actually believe that someone would spend this much energy fine tuning the ordinary. Well, the thing about these three men is that they were their own worst critics. They all three created their own new worlds were none was before, worlds so perfect and pure anyone of lesser power would be unable to break them. Then they each turned on their own creation, finding and exploiting the weaknesses of their own creations, selves and now us. The art is not in the man but in how he made himself broken.

Look at each of them and see the beauty in partial dismemberment. Ruiz denotes this at the beginning with otherwise inexplicable, powerful amputee sex. As with Ruiz' best work, people act as others, split selves, whores of themselves, auditors and bureaucrats of sex. Love must be dissymmetric. Narrative to have power must be a bit jagged inside, where you want to go.

I admit, I think Malkovich was a bad choice. He really can be dull. But he is supposed to stagger through this, finding puddles of warm light, clean frames or open enclosure. The women are the thing, always the thing here and they are drawn well.

Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.

"KLIMT" is not a documentary about the artist, but a personal and dreamlike examination of his career and life, from his own point of view, as he lies dying in a hospital ward in Vienna. This thoughtful, risk-taking film is visually stunning, and is portrayed by actors at the peak of their game. It deals with themes and questions that occupied the artist, his community, and Europeans in the late 19th, and early 20th centuries. To learn more about Gustav Klimt the artist, look him up on Wikipedia; enjoy the film on its own merits, if you are a fan of the "Die Hard " series, you probably won't like it. Rather think of "A Beautiful Mind," or "Citizen Kane," but where themes and allegory are the mysteries, not relationships.

Saw this movie yesterday and i have to say that it was a major disappointment. I've been going to the movies for decades now and never before i felt like i did when i was watching "Klimt". Almost like a physical will to shout or start running. The movie is annoying as hell indeed. I felt almost claustrophobic there.

The movie has no real beginning, so you're thrown in into Klimt's life, with a lot of characters and names popping out here and then, and if you don't already know them you'll be lost in a couple of minutes. I simply didn't understand the point of this movie. If one wants to find out more about Gustav Klimt's life THIS IS NOT THE BEST WAY to do it.

"Pre death hallucinations"!? Maybe, but even so the movie is quite boring. One of the worst things i've ever seen.

I didn't know too much about Gustav Klimt before watching this film and I didn't leave the cinema all that enlightened either. This pretentious and baffling movie informs us of the following: that Klimt painted lots of pictures of naked women, he swore quite a lot, he wasn't religious, he had lots of illegitimate children and his mother and sister were mentally unstable. Fascinating. We're also treated to scenes in which Klimt takes part in unexplained bouts of boxing in the middle of the street and in which he repeatedly talks to an Austrian government official who, it turns out is actually invisible and just a figment of the artist's imagination. Oh, and Klimt also visits a brothel where he dresses up as a monkey and where the prostitutes wear fake moustaches. If Klimt's story isn't worth telling, then why bother? And if a film had to be made, couldn't the filmmakers have produced something at the very least coherent? This is the kind of movie which gives biopics a bad name. Definitely one to avoid unless you enjoy being confused and bored.

First the good things: The pictures are quite nice. The costumes also. Malkovitch is okay.

Now for the rest: The Film is trying to be mystical but ends up annoying. You will get nearly next to no information about the artist. Hectical cuts ruin every consistency, Characters pop up and vanish again so you will not understand anything. Name of the movie should be changed to the death-rows of Klimt. The film discusses only his last months of his live... ...I think... since Klimt is not aging in the film, but since the film tries to be a feverdream its kind of unclear. Nearly all other actors act like if they have eaten wood for breakfeast to often. I have seen better dialogs in porns. I and my girlfriend felt like we were trashcans and new picture-trash would be thrown at us every minute. Its the first film which I left ca. 10 Minutes before it was over cause I could no longer stand this bullshit. Wien is immaculate no ugly people, no trash all is unbelievable clean... The music is as confusing as the rest of the film. At the end the film mutated to a bad theater-play. If you really have to see it turn of the volume and the film might be okay.

I saw the short version at the European Screen market during the Berlin Film Festival ,and I have to tell that this version is nothing more than a visualization. No real story, unclear jumps between reality and vision. Bombastic sets, incredible costumes -- but then the same road is used for Vienna and Paris street scenes. Besides that: Nicolai Kinski (son of late Klaus) as Schiele is a diamond in this. Malkovich is the monolith in this nothing of a storyline.

This picture urgently needs an English synchronization. The German/Austrian actors contra American/English mix is horrible. This is a German who writes this!

I hope I will see the long one somewhen. Perhaps it makes it much clearer.

Despite the opinion of many commenters, I really don't think that I wasted my time or money. In fact I enjoyed it a lot. I think the movie is just a series of beautiful shots with wonderful scenery and of course beautiful women and for that I declare it OK. I admit that it is not well-acted or there are many annoying parts (excessive use of sharp and noisy cuts) but it is an amusing work in its own way. I don't get it; why some people get disappointed when they see something that is not what they expect. Why it should be an accurate story of Klimt's life? The bottom line is if you are interested in painting or photography, you have to consider seeing this film.

Malkovich ( who can play anything and anybody) is austrian painter gustav klimt. Probably best known for drawing women's bodies, some within patterns, or scenes. These were sometimes considered pornographic or erotic. And klimt should know, having fathered fourteen children, according to wikipeda. Because his commissioned works were shunned, he stopped taking public commissions, and only worked in private. Because his father had worked with gold, klimt worked gold leaf into many of his works. And apparently, many of his works were stolen by the nazis during world war two, and some of them are still in the process of being returned to the families who had owned them. Klimt lived to a ripe old age of 55, which wasn't bad for the time. The last few scenes of the film are pretty trippy, as he seems to be going batty. Directed by raúl ruiz.

watching this film has certainly been a waste of time; I couldn't even tell my friends what this film is about (except that it's 'about Klimt',obviously ;-))... I love Klimt's paintings and was really looking forward to watching this film, hoping to learn something about his famous paintings and about his life or about Klimt the man...yet, there is absolutely nothing relevant in it neither about Klimt the painter nor about the man (unless you are really interested in finding out that he was having lots of affairs with his models and -as a result- had quite a lot of illegitimate children, one of them being a prostitute)...so don't even bother watching it...you will only feel confused and annoyed at having wasted your time...

The best thing one can say about Ruiz's impression of Klimt and his life is that the director is a great copyist. (Or at least his DOP and production designer are.) The images are stunning as they should be, having been composed from the artist's own repertoire of breath-taking women. Unfortunately, there is a lot more between the beautiful pictures, and the best that can be said is we are puzzled by the sliver of Klimt's life -- and loves -- we get a glimpse of. Was he really as disdaining of his Sesessionist artist colleagues as Ruiz wants us to believe?

I saw the English "director's cut" at the Kino in Vienna last week, and most of the audience had the same stunned look on their faces as we left the small theatre. (And I don't think it was because German was their first language and they didn't get the dialog...there wasn't all that much of it worth getting.) "What had we been subjected to?" seemed to be a common thread of the lobby conversation I could pick up.

I could only think how the Austrian culture ministry must be regretting the millions of Euro they contributed to this portrait of what comes across as a thoroughly insufferable national icon. After seeing this film, they are probably thankful that many of the great Klimts in the Belvedere have been packed off to California, and hope the artist himself could reclaim citizenship in that part of the world. Mozart received better treatment at the hands of his cinemascopic biographer than did Klimt.

A great disappointment. Maybe an Austrian filmmaker will get a crack at one of that country's national treasures and do him justice. Talk about cultural appropriation!

Judging from the reviews here you either love this movie or you absolutely hate it. I for one loved it. Being from Austria myself, you often get confronted with Schiele and Klimt - especially in Vienna, to a point where you're basically sick of it. Because of that I never got to fully appreciate these two artists until much later. This movie did help me to appreciate the artwork more. I was able to see this movie at the premiere in Austria when it came out and haven't seen it since then (though I would like to) and I had to think about it many times since then.

I can imagine that the reason many people didn't like this movie was because it's not what they expected.

If you want to see a straight forward, biographical accurate movie about the life of Gustav Klimt, then this movie isn't for you.

The basic premise is that Gustav Klimt is lying on his death bed and in a manner of flashbacks you get to see random scenes about a fictitious story revolving around a mysterious woman. Blinded by the fever, the scenes appear surreal and deliver a feeling similar to what you may feel upon viewing Klimt's artwork.

There's no straight plot following this movie and the real Klimt may not have been the way he appears in the movie, but that was never intended anyway. What this movie does is brilliantly deliver an atmosphere very fitting to the Wiener Moderne. The very important "Kaffeehaus Kultur" at the time, where intellectuals of Vienna spent the entire day in coffee houses is portrayed very precisely as well.

I also think that Malkovich and Nikolai Kinski seem to be a near perfect cast for Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele.

Anyway, if you've read this review and get the feeling that this movie is not for you, then don't watch it. But if you're intrigued by what you've read then by all means, go see this movie!

There is a word, memorably coined by Hugh Grant, for this type of film: Euro-pud. Take some public money from a European government, select a writer-director known principally (if at all) for his foreign-language films, and assemble a cast of one American star and an assortment of European actors. Scramble, and serve in a handful of continental cinemas that need films on the cheap.

Raoul Ruiz's biopic of Gustav Klimt feels like what it is - a polyglot project made to please a national government rather than a cinema audience. It is by turns boring, uninformative, poorly acted, directionless, non-sensical and crass. John Malkovich, in the role of the titular Austrian artist, spends the vast majority of the film looking bored or dead, perhaps appropriately, since the translated script portrays Klimt as a world-weary man condemned to a creeping death by his syphilitic encounters with prostitutes.

Other characters dart in and out of his life with befuddling rapidity, either making imperious statements that are in no way profound or laughing at things that aren't funny. They also appear to be mounted on lazy Susans, as one of Ruiz's irritating motifs is to wheel the camera around his actors so that the background is a dizzying whirl. This, like his other themes (breaking mirrors and requests for water), are so heavy-handed that you wonder if his inspiration was an essay written by a teenage history of art student.

The film is also knee-deep in absurdity, only some of which is intentional. Klimt has two ludicrously staged fist fights on the streets of Vienna, and there is one dreadful scene in which an unexplained stranger is meant to be doing shadow puppetry. It is difficult to suspend disbelief as the prancing figure on the screen is clearly not the man's waggling fingers, but Saffron Burrows's backlit silhouette. Malkovich is obliged to play along, however, and slithers around in front of it, casting no shadow of his own.

Arguably the worst scene features Klimt chatting to Egon Schiele in a bar as the lights go out and a crazed tramp enters, apparently to act out a piece of performance art about war. Schiele leaves in plain view, and yet at their next meeting Klimt exclaims: "What happened to you? You disappeared."

Bags of full-frontal nudity and occasionally brave efforts at acting fail to disguise a film that, ultimately, tells us little about its subject or his art. He was, we are told, foul-mouthed, delusional and constantly thirsty. I'm not even convinced this is accurate. It is a film that desperately wants to be Amadeus, but ends up being like Jefferson in Paris. Pointless and contrived, this is Europud at its worst.

Count me as one the haters of this hodge-podge pretentious mess of a movie. The director is trying to act as if he's a Dalique surrealist with this film, but it comes across as choppy, uneven "art school senior" project filled with amateurish, hammy performances, especially from John Malkovich and his eurotrash cast. Ridiculously over the top, unnatural acting; the last time I've watched such bad acting is Star Wars: Attack of the Clones. So much potential, squandered by a talentless, Euro hack director; definitely for the direct to video Redbox crowd. For the art crowd that applauds this as a masterpiece; Klimt's artwork are beautiful masterpieces, but this movie is art drek for the pretentiously laughable. Cheap titillation and goofy performances do not equate art.

Unbelievable, those who actually say great things about this movie are the same pretentious people who look at a blank canvas and say "ah this is great art", and sip wine and eat cheese. This movie is a bad dream in a bad dream in a bad dream that never gives anything you can actually learn about the artist or the art scene during the time. Random punches in the street; mad people around the artist; about those women that don't understand art but are pretentious to say "Ah he is an artist".

I really like Klimt's art work and his vision through his paintings. But the people behind this movie tried too much to dwell into how he might have thought and lost their way while making this movie, and as i am writing this while watching or skipping though the movie, there again the guy shows up who says he is from Paris, and represents someone, come to think off I don't even know his name.

I never write reviews only when the movie is so bad that i have to write it to get it off my mind.. hehehehehehe