Flamboyant filmmaker Ken Russell takes a shot at ultra lush romantic composer Gustav Mahler with typical yet not typical results.
On a long train ride Mahler looks back at incidents in his life. This gives Russell a chance to indulges his strong visual sense and disregard a more conventional narrative structure. The result is really very entertaining.
Russell's musical sequences are as absurdly over the top as usual particularly an extended montage where Mahler converts from Judaism to Catholicism. Here Mahler confronts Cosima Wagner who in Ken Russell land is a goose stepping Christian in fishnet stockings. It's all pretty incredible stuff.
Ken Russell had been filming this kind of free form film about artists for years so any viewer expecting something conventional from this director had been watching films under a rock.
This is an entertaining film from a great if rather crazy director that is impressive to look at and listen to as well.
115 minutes
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