Mahler

A film about Gustav Mahler that has as much or as little to do with conventional artist films as the Lake District has to do with the Salzkammergut. It shows a tormented genius who flees from Judaism to Catholicism, from his wife to nature, from life to the emphasis of music, and hallucinates his own death as crucifixion by Cosima Wagner and burning by SS men. The staging principle: place a fragile impressionistic dot of emotion and confront it with a garish pop scene. The result: a wreath of kitsch, vision, gossip and delirium, a ring road of cinematic eclecticism and a camp musical whose subtlety Ken Russell confidently characterises: ‘Bad taste is a wonderful thing. If there were only good taste in life, in art, in film, we would have been dead long ago.’ (H.T.)