Johannes Holzhausen brings something Wisemanesque and unobtrusive to this modest documentary about the Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum, coolly recording its extensive refurbishment of exhibition areas, and the everyday work of restoring, cataloguing, taking budget meetings and receiving important personages. These include the British Museum’s Neil MacGregor, who converses with his Austrian counterpart in fluent German, and shrewdly notes the exhilarating perspectives of the museum’s huge spaces, their Flucht. It seems to have no small sense of the imperial past of Austria and Hungary, and one contributor says: “I feel like the Habsburgs weigh me down like a millstone.” It’s an appropriate sentiment for this year. A pleasing, high-minded film; also something of a palate-cleanser. It is interesting to compare it with the recently released Cathedrals Of Culture collection, produced by Wim Wenders. Museums are congenial subjects for film– something to do, perhaps, with the drama, spectacle and narrative they provide.
