As you may already know, a motion picture on the life of Gustav Klimt (starring the very talented John Malkovich) has been in the works for quite some time now. Although it seems that details have been very hush hush, rumors have it that the film will be released this year. In case you missed it, here is an article from the LA Times about the film we are all waiting for:
March 27, 2005 - The LA Times (Lanie Goodman, author):
The life and provocative work of fin de siecle Viennese artist Gustav Klimt were made for film. Oddly, no one seems to have noticed until now.
It's raining gold on John Malkovich. Feather-light flecks of gold leaf swirl through the atelier where he sits, bent over a drawing board. An argument with a woman has interrupted his painstaking inlay work, and now she has left, slamming the door.
He strokes the cat curled in his lap, contemplating the canvas on the easel beside him. It's a portrait of a bare-breasted beauty with dreamy half-closed lids and a provocative hint of a smile, the figure surrounded by rich patterns of silver and gold.
Sporting a full beard and a long blue Moorish-style artist's smock, Malkovich is on the set of "Klimt," an impressionistic evocation of the scandal-plagued turn-of-the-century painter Gustav Klimt. Call it a coincidence, but the resemblance is uncanny. He's a dead ringer for the Viennese artist. "I wasn't really aware of the resemblance until a few years ago," says Malkovich during a break. A trio of European producers had picked up on the striking physical likeness and approached the actor about playing Klimt in a straightforward biopic. "The materials they sent convinced me that the story of Klimt's life could make quite an interesting film," Malkovich says, "but not with that script."
Then Franco-Chilean writer and filmmaker Raoul Ruiz was brought on board to direct, and the entire focus of the film shifted.
"I use authentic dialogues and events," says Ruiz, "but Klimt's story is meant to be like a daydream, a fresco of real and imaginary characters revolving around the painter. I approach his life as a fantasy, in the manner of Arthur Schnitzler, the Austrian writer. It's more like a merry-go-round of fragmented memories, a play with mirrors."
Malkovich had worked with Ruiz before, playing the decadent Baron de Charlus in an artsy adaptation of Proust's "Le Temps Retrouve" (Time Regained, 1999) and a genteel husband in a Provencal drama, "Les Ames Fortes" (Savage Souls, 2001), based on a novel by Jean Giono. So he reconsidered "Klimt" and accepted the lead.
Notorious work, scandalous life
It is the last day of the 11-week shoot of the $6.6-million Austrian, German, British and French Epo-film co-production. The exteriors were shot in Vienna, and these final interior scenes inside Klimt's atelier are being filmed in a deserted lot of Warner studios in the suburbs outside of Cologne. "Klimt" also stars Saffron Burrows ("Troy," "Miss Julie"), who plays the Parisian dancer Lea, the artist's elusive muse and mistress; the supporting cast includes German actress Veronica Ferres, as Emilie Floge, the painter's longtime companion; Nikolai Kinski, son of Klaus Kinski, who portrays the artist Egon Schiele; and British actor Stephen Dillane ("The Hours") as the secretary, symbol of the oppressive state bureaucracy of the ailing Austro-Hungarian Empire.
The film begins and ends with Klimt on his deathbed, recalling moments of his life between 1900 and 1918, while his close friend Schiele sketches his portrait. Weakened by syphilis and the Spanish flu, the artist would eventually succumb to a heart attack at 56.
In one of the day's scenes, Burrows, dressed in a long skirt, tight-fitting velvet jacket and enormous plumed hat, has come to bid the artist farewell in his dream. She appears at the doorway while four men on a scaffold toss fistfuls of paper snowflakes and fan them with a wind machine. Malkovich, stretched listlessly on a bed, is surrounded by four plaintively meowing cats (who doubtless smell the hot apple strudel on the snack table behind the set wall). Leaning against the atelier windows are Klimt's monumental state-commissioned ceiling paintings, "Philosophy," "Medicine" and "Jurisprudence," hand-painted replicas (the originals were destroyed by the Nazis) specially created for the film. After the murals were fiercely attacked by his critics as pornography, Klimt "stole" them back and never displayed them again.
Surprisingly, Ruiz is the first director to dramatize Klimt's career, though it smacks of an explosively sexy period piece. The painter's portrayal of voluptuous naked women in overtly erotic poses made his work notorious, and his private life was equally scandalous. "Klimt had a famous reputation as a ladies' man," recounts Ruiz. "He allegedly fathered over 40 children, though only 16 were recognized by the state. One even turned out to become a filmmaker.
"He was a man of the people. He used to speak in dialect just to antagonize the bourgeoisie."
Klimt was also an impressive boxer. "He was apparently quite athletic. In one scene, I even get to punch a few people out," Malkovich says with obvious pleasure. "I see him as someone who was talented, lost at times, quite elusive, but thoroughly decent, all in all."
Art that shocked society
The son of an unsuccessful gold engraver, Klimt was born in 1862 and lived in desperate poverty throughout his childhood. Though he left school at 14, he managed to enroll in the Vienna School of Decorative Arts, where his talent was immediately recognized.
The artist is perhaps best known for "The Kiss," a painting of an embracing couple surrounded by rich patterns of gold and silver. His work was constantly criticized for being too sensual, his symbolism deemed "too deviant." His modern goddesses surrounded by allegorical snakes and skulls shocked upstanding Viennese society, as did the graphic nudity of his subjects. "Klimt certainly wasn't the first to paint naked women," Ruiz says. "But he also showed pubic hair, pregnant bellies, and old men and women with sagging flesh -- nuda veritas!
"What is interesting about Klimt is that in the short space of a lifetime, he evolved from a Raphael to a Van Gogh. In Romania, where he got his first big job -- and his first syphilis -- he was a painter of the court, like Velazquez. Then he moved on to the painter of the Austrian Empire, paid by the state. Then he broke away and got commissions from Vienna's Jewish bourgeoisie and became a painter of the wealthy. Toward the end, he just painted for himself. So he became rich, but he was also generous and died without money. Too many children to support!"
The artist led a surprisingly polarized -- even quiet -- life when he wasn't romancing his models. He dined nightly with his mother and sisters, who lived in the flat downstairs and took care of his every need. Weekends and holidays were often spent with his companion Floge, a strong-willed, free-spirited woman who handled his business affairs and allegedly even chose his lovers.
A man of few words, the artist once wrote: "I have never painted a self-portrait. I am more interested in other people, especially women.... I am convinced that as a person I am not particularly interesting."
"Klimt found himself uninteresting only because ... he never met me," Malkovich quips in his deadpan "Being John Malkovich" tone of voice. "It would appear to me to be a good quality not to find yourself endlessly fascinating," he muses.
Between takes, Malkovich makes a beeline for his canvas chair, picks up a large pad and a box of pastels and sketches. Over the past few days, he's been working on a portrait of a naked sylphlike creature with flowing tresses, seated on a swing. Inspired by his role, perhaps? "Oh, I draw all the time. I don't do it very well, but I do know how to erase," he says dryly, rubbing out the line he has just traced.
Ask Malkovich a direct question about his personal connection to Klimt, and his answers become increasingly vague. He admits that, like the painter, he is "prone to dreaminess." A professed Rembrandt man at heart, the actor does not prefer any particular Klimt painting over another. "When someone does something 10,000 times better than you do, you're reluctant to choose a favorite," Malkovich shrugs.
He didn't immerse himself in the artist's work to prepare for the role. "Obviously, while we were shooting in Vienna, I went to the Leopold and the Belvedere museums and saw quite a bit of Klimt's work," he says. "To be filming in a place where a person has lived is a great luxury," Malkovich declares, "but it has a minimal impact on the movie. In the end, you have to do what's in the script."
He found much to appreciate in being Gustav Klimt.
"In fin de siecle Vienna, you were dealing with a group of psychiatrists, composers, novelists, playwrights, architects and, of course, painters -- who thought there was a cure." Here Malkovich pauses enigmatically. "It's obviously a generational thing, but I'm a Beckett man. And as Beckett said: 'You're on earth, there's no cure for that.' Klimt and his circle didn't believe that, which I find very haunting and wonderful. They were probably less pessimistic than we are."
article by Lanie Goodman. (c) 2005 The LA Times.
photos courtesy of www.moviesonline.ca
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