That was an excellent one.

Good concept, poorly executed.

It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

Yes, absolutely, there is fun to be had, as well as many, many things to go boom, all amid an atmospheric urban jungle.

Elmer Back plays Eisenstein (where did they find this guy?). Back's performance is magnetic and mesmerizing, one of my favorites of the year. Back brings a wonderful sense of humor to the film and is an outstanding physical actor/comedian. His slight facial gestures and mannerisms bring a full depth of dimension to his portrayal of Sergei Eisenstein. His frenetic, manic energy with a resting heart rate of about 150 beats per minute is simply a wonder to watch and in perfect step with the film's visual explosiveness. Biopics (by the way this is a VERY loose biopic) are exceptionally easy to make bad, pretty easy to make mediocre, hard as s**t to make good and nearly impossible to make unique. So it comes as no surprise that it a truly formula shattering biopic covering one of the most wildly innovative, complex and enigmatic geniuses in the history of cinema (or in the world).It's the thirties and Soviet film pioneer and Stalinists propagandists Sergei Eisenstein has been shunned by Hollywood for his obvious Red connections and on taking advice by friends such as Charlie Chaplin has gone to Mexico to make his next great "Masterpiece!" Which is more than a struggle, for as the audience slowly finds out, largely in manic diatribes spouted by Eisenstein himself, the legendary auteur is in a highly confused and vulnerable state in his life: financially, politically, sexually, philosophically and artistically. The set pieces in Eisenstein explode in glorious color imposed in fine tuned geometric framing; the depth of staging creates a world within a world, making the sets in Guanajuato a place that existed yet never quite existed. Greenaway in homage to Eisenstein uses many of his techniques montage editing, curt shots, quick scenes that suddenly cut in about three seconds just as Eisenstein, Aleksandr Dovzhenko, Dziga Vertov or other similar montage formalists such as Abel Gance would have. The difference in Greenaway's adoption and mixing of his own techniques with those classic reverence styles is that he maintains continuity in style yet never grows too predictable with his camera and never falls into the deathtrap that is nauseating Tarantino-esque pastiche. Greenaway's use of wide-angle lenses and wonderful tracking dolly shots (reminiscent of Max Ophuls) to follow the frenzied, perpetually moving Eisenstein to-and-fro is amazing and never misses a beat. At certain points Greenaway splits the screen using classic clips of Eisenstein's films and photographs of people that are being referenced as Eisenstein speaks, putting on full display the classic stylings of classic art-cinema, all the while maintaining an air of freshness.Back's performance can become much too some, but in all of Eisenstein's rambling monologues one becomes aware of this man's inner feelings, his emotions that swing from one pole to the next, his true feelings about the Soviet Bear, his fears, his eccentricities, his hang-ups, his diva-bility, as well as his true genius. While the story may seem to remain a bit too vague for some, the devil is in the details. Greenaway is not the man that is going to do a traditional deep-sea delving into the life a character. In Eisenstein Greenaway methodically externalizes the director's philosophies on life and art (and the machinations behind art). We learn about Eisenstein through simple, seemingly unimportant instances (in terms of the man's work), like how he falls for his Mexican chaperone Palomino (Luis Alberti), who eventually anally deflowers Eisenstein in a very funny, touching, matter of fact scene that I assume made many audience members cringe uncomfortably. There are also a few striking scenes with skeletons and a skull; Eisenstein becoming truly enamored with all of this imagery that's semiotics recall the mystery and exotic pageantry of "The Day of the Dead." The Day of the Dead…Eisenstein was very much interested in how the mind processed associations and I couldn't help but to think of the hopeless drunk Albert Finney played in John Huston's Mexico-set film Under the Volcano, where both Eisenstein and Finney's characters mirror each other in a particular way. Both are confused, wasting their talents, lost, lost in an existential sense and lost in a foreign place. Eisenstein in Guanajuato is crucially underrated. For fans of Eisenstein it is a must see and is still enjoyable for fans of film even if unaware of the great Sergei Eisenstein and early cinematic forms, though will certainly miss a lot.

Peter Greenaway's ambitions and talent are gargantuan, and his achievements, films such as Prospero's Books and The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover, are mighty. Eisenstein in Guanajuato, which chronicles 10 days in the life of Sergei Eisenstein, is not a masterpiece, but is unique in its visual techniques and its inclusion of explicit sex (and anal sex at that!) that make it stand out among biographical films. It would have been helpful to have read a biography of Eisenstain before seeing the movie, and to have recently viewed 10 Days that Shook the World and The Battleship Potemkin and Que Viva Mexico. Nevertheless, I was thrilled by the cinematography which used techniques that I have never seen used in quite the way they are used here. For example, scenes shift quickly and often from B&W to color, and sometimes use both B&W and color in the same frame. There is one amazing scene that seems to take place at a street corner, but gradually the building behind Sergei straightens out and reveals itself to be the straight facade of a mid-block building. Every reference to an Eisenstein movie is accompanied by a shot of that actual movie. Every name dropped by the characters is accompanied by a photo of the actual person whose name was dropped. It helps in understanding the movie.The most thrilling thing about the movie, for me, is the inclusion of a rather explicit gay sex scene. It is Sergei's first time having sex, and he seduced by a very handsome young man, his handler and interpreter, who joyously teaches Sergei about the Mexican siesta, and has Sergei undress. Sergei is quite uncomfortable about his body (the actor playing him is rather ungainly, like Sergei was). Sergei does not think that anyone would want to have sex with him, no man, no woman. The handler assures Sergei that he is wrong, and proceeds, graphically, and erotically, to enter the Eisenstein anus. I rarely get aroused by non- porn movies, but this scene is one that I think about often, and fondly. The notion that an unsexy man can been seen as sexy and can become sexual, is one that I appreciate. And so, Viva Greenaway!

When I was waiting for the movie to start, I was wondering why so many gay couples had come in to see it. However this was all explained as soon as the movie started.This film indeed is not about Eisenstein making a film (we see very little to nothing of that), or about his time in Mexico: except for some beautiful shots of nature and some dead masks and philosophical bladibla which has been taken totally out of context and are never truly deepened, there is little to no true interaction with Mexican culture. All conversations except for a very small amount are in English.No, this movie is all about the male body and, to put it frank, gay anal sex. Yes, indeed the butt-loving Eisenstein receives from his Mexican guide Cañedo is probably his most profound encounter with the Mexicans, and for the rest of the movie the two characters do little else than run around naked with their willies flopping up and down. Other characters do appear in the movie but get no real chance at any story or development. The prime example of this are the American brother and sister who barge into Eisenstein's hotel room towards to end of the movie. This is actually the moment that the viewer discovers that Eisenstein has already been in Mexico for 8 months shooting a movie with American funding, something quite essential but completely discarded during the first part of the picture.The most annoying part of the film was certainly the vertiginous camera work. In the scene in the hotel room just described, the camera spins for about 5 minutes around the bed with a half-naked Eisenstein in it. I had to actually close my eyes as I felt the whole scene was making me sick. The vomiting and diarrhea scenes at the start of the movie had already done the same thing.In other words, for those profoundly into male nudity and gay cinema, I would recommend to go and see this film; otherwise, you'll probably have some other place you'd rather be.

EISENSTEIN IN GUANAJUATO is elder British auteur Greenaway's extravagant view of the famous Russian film pioneer he claims to admire immensely. The World Premiere presented at the 2015 Berlin Film Festival was an outrageously colorful ball buster, much better than expected after numerous previous Greenaway fiascos seen over the years ~ In fact, a glorious raucous Wakeup Call in the wake of a string of big name festival soporifics earlier in the week. The film bursts forth immediately with numerous three-way split screens bulging with highly informative and educational archival footage~~ almost too many messages to absorb at a single sitting.Most outrageous of all, we see the revered cinema Grandmaster Eisenstein presented In unabashed full frontal nude glory as a gloating Fag (extinct word for "gay") --receiving rectal penis injection from handsome Mexican producer and new found Latin lover (Luis Alberti) who introduces the austere Russian filmmaker to the pleasures of alternative sexual orientation. Presumably about Eisenstein's trip to Mexico in 1931 to make his legendary lost film which was later pieced together from existing fragments by others -- his grandiose epic collage "QUE VIVA MEJICO!". Finnish born Actor Elmer Bäck (b. 1981) is no dead ringer for the real Eisenstein but the wild wiry genius hairdo serves to identify the character. This is actually more about the fun he had there than the making of the famous movie -- thought to be lost for many years -- which is a story in itself. Just remember that Guanajuato is a city in Mexico, not to be confused with GUANTÀNAMO, the infamous CIA water-boarding school in Cuba. Bring along your Mexican jumping beans and an open mind. Not for every taste, but then -- What is? Eisenstein purists may consider all this an insult to his memory while others may see it as a loose tribute to be taken with a few grains of salt.It is well worth quoting the director's own view of the subject of his film: "The venerated filmmaker Eisenstein is comparable in talent, insight and wisdom, with the likes of Shakespeare or Beethoven; there are few - if any - directors who can be elevated to such heights. On the back of his revolutionary film Battleship Potemkin, he was celebrated around the world, and invited to the US. Ultimately rejected by Hollywood and maliciously maligned by conservative Americans, Eisenstein traveled to Mexico in 1931 to consider a film privately funded by American pro-Communist sympathizers, headed by the American writer Upton Sinclair. Eisenstein's sensual Mexican experience appears to have been pivotal in his life and film career - a significant hinge between the early successes of Strike, Battleship Potemkin, and October, which mad him a world-renowned figure, and his hesitant later career with Alexander Nevsky, Ivan the Terrible and The Boyar's Plot". Peter Greenaway Hmm -- xMakes one wonder about Greenaway's own orientation ...N'est-ce pas?