Sadly Over-hyped

Disturbing yet enthralling

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

Gustav Mahler slips in and out of fantasy and memory on a train ride with his wife Alma on their way to Vienna. (I liked the segments on his childhood best.) Roger Powell as the protagonist bears a certain resemblance but hardly as close as some reviewers would have their readers believe. Despite spirited performances by Georgina Hale (as Alma) and Powell, this reviewer found the conversations between the famous pair on art, life, and love neither particularly deep nor riveting. This had a good side: it made the interludes of Russellian excess less distractions than diversions.Nevertheless, though portrayal of Cosima Wagner as a bumping and grinding proto-Nazi might have been hilarious in the 50s, by the 70s it was banal. I felt sorry for Powell having to appear in the same scene. The sight of the newly Catholicized Mahler dining on hog's head is disgusting enough (for some reason I was even more put off by the way he avidly washed it down with milk chugged from a pitcher, blithely breaking the injunction against mixture of meat and dairy, of course). But for me the worst transgression was less blatant, and came when Russell had what looked like an oom-pah hofbrau band, but a marching one, play a passage from the third movement of the first symphony, apparently oblivious to its lilting klezmer echoes. Now that's what I call offensive.Incredibly to me, some reviewers see this flick as Russell's best, a place I would give to "Gothic", in which the mix of fantasy, excess, and reality (history) jells to perfection. A six mainly because I have a soft spot for the subject matter.

This film, though good in parts and with a fascinating performance by Robert Powell, is too stylised and idiosyncratic to be looked on as a true representation of Mahler's life and works. Rather it should be seen as an essay on Ken Russell's view of his inner struggles, and particularly his conversion to Catholicism. Too much of the dialogue and camera-work is stilted, and it has the look of a film on a budget, using locations in the lake district and Derbyshire (Chatsworth House) to represent Austria. This last comment may seem nit-picking, but using well known locations that many know are not where they are supposed to be can be distracting. Georgina Hale didn't really convince as Alma for me, a strong, stunning and seductive woman that Hale can't quite portray.Given the fascination of Mahler (and a ready made soundtrack of stunning music!) its perhaps time filmmakers had another go at portraying his life, works and tragic death. The perfect actor for the lead role - Robert Powell (who can forget that silhouette of Powell's face on the train, looking exactly like famous photos of Mahler himself?) - is perhaps too old now, though he could portray him in his later years. It would be one of those bio-pics of people I had always been intrigued to see on film (others include Alexander the Great, Howard Hughes, Hitler - all who have been portrayed recently).

I'm not certain you could do justice to Mahler's life with a movie--a miniseries may be the minimum. Mahler's pieces are just so lengthy, including a minute or so of the music is more confusing than representational of the character of his music.Yet, Russell does this. It doesn't make it a bad film. Indeed, Mahler's life isn't purely his music, and the events of that life are all pretty much there. There are some incredibly touching sequences. Alma burying the score of her composition after her husband rejects it, and falling on the ground crying. A representation of one of the Kindertotenlieder, ending with the death of one of Mahler's daughters that is so sudden it's like a kick in the stomach. A visit with what one assumes is the Archduke that takes an unexpected and genuinely sad turn.Curiously, Russell decides to end the film on a curiously upbeat note, falling back to the 6th Symphony's joyous "Alma" theme of the first movement to show the reconciliation of Alma and Mahler and Mahler's acceptance of his own impending death. The controversial unfinished 10th Symphony, which really showed where Mahler's mind was at death (serene acceptance and relief) is only represented at the beginning of the film by a brief excerpt to illustrate a dream sequence. For one who knows Mahler, well, this seems an injustice to Mahler the creator. For one who doesn't, this seems like forced happiness, at best.

As with so many of Ken Russell's films, this work probes, again, the nature of artistic genius, the mores of artists during the last 150 years and, especially, the proximity of this form of genius to psycho-pathology. During this period-- 1968 to 1980-- the period of Russell's greatest popularity, infamy and exposure coincided with a formative period of my life. He was ' a god of my adolescence.' By this I mean to say that my critical 'objectivity' is somewhat blurred when it comes to assessing the films of this period. For I, too am a music lover.