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Reviews
Museum Hours (2012)
Elegant Post-Modern Masterpiece
Museum Hours is a masterfully filmed discourse on contemporary and historic human life. Seen through the simple, immediate eyes of the protagonists, great artwork, discussions about it and the ordinary mundane activity of life and death, collide to remind us of our shared humanity. Then underneath all of this we see the artist's eye looking and seeing art everywhere: What it picks out in a world of detritus and makes rare. How it levels us and makes us profound.
I hadn't heard of Jem Cohen before, but he is a fantastic filmmaker! Museum Hours reminds me of My Dinner with Andre without the warmth of Wally Shawn. But with the same intelligence and intimacy, inviting us into a visionary world where the watcher becomes an actor in the drama of conversation. I love movies like this, where the director thinks deeply about the audience, about his discussion with us, about what he is saying, communicating to us, and who hopes- who cares--that we hear him.