Klimt (2006)

Veronica Ferres and John Malkovich in Klimt

Potty, dotty and batty, this meditation on the great painter will make sense only to aficionados of Klimt's work or fans of director Raul Ruiz. Others should be wary. When John Malkovich, as Klimt, declares at film's end, "My life is now a complete finished circle", I did at last understand why Ruiz kept using nauseatingly dizzying circular dolly shots throughout the film. Saffron Burrough's character seems to represent Klimt's erotically charged unconscious and Stephen Dillane's character his paranoid rational side, but to what end? Nikolai Kinski, as Egon Schiele, chews the scenery as vigorously as his Dad. A colorful fiasco.