Museum Hours (2012)

Museum Hours: Directed by Jem Cohen. With Mary Margaret O’Hara, Bobby Sommer, Ela Piplits, Marcus O’Hara. When a Vienna museum guard befriends an enigmatic visitor, the grand Kunsthistorisches Art Museum becomes a mysterious crossroads that sparks explorations of their lives, the city, and the ways in which works of art reflect and shape the world.

“This is a mostly plot less, mostly reflective, semi-serious, semi-whimsical movie with the tone of a PBS documentary. It is a lot like a landscape painting. It will work best for photographers, lovers of photography and Pieter Bruegel the Elder, museum goers who routinely rent audio guides, and anyone else predisposed to view the condition of humans in the 21st century as alternately harsh and exuberant (or punctuated by esthetic surprises), hemmed in by the state, and leading inevitably to the grave. Have a good life.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eA woman from Montreal, in Vienna to visit a hospitalized childhood friend, meets a taciturn guard at the Kunsthistorisches Museum, and together they take in the city and its inhabitants, which together become a reflection of the art housed in the museum.u003cbr/u003eu003cbr/u003eu0026quot;Museum Hoursu0026quot; is a bit ponderous at times but rarely slow.”