by Joseph Byron Smith
Joseph wrote this article to contribute to the Light Travels site so thanks to him for contributing!
In Jem Cohen‘s recent film MUSEUM HOURS, Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum is at the centre of the action. And lead character, Johann (Bobby Sommer), stewards the Museum. The other central figure in this film’s quiet exploration of everyday life is the 16th Century painter Pieter Bruegel. What was interesting for me was that the film draws comparisons – some slight, some overly heavy – between itself, filmmaking (or observation and composition), and Bruegel’s work.
Bruegel has cropped up in a number of other films; notably The Mill and The Cross, William Raban’s Thames Film and Tarkovsky’s Solaris. After seeing Museum Hours I decided to re-watch the sequence from Solaris in which Bruegel’s The Hunters in The Snow (1565) features heavily. I found that not only were the paintings shot in a very similar way in both films but they also shared the similar theme of everyday human experience. Bruegel’s paintings are detailed and animated compositions, somewhat free of determined foci (as we are told in Museum Hours’ most curiously didactic scene) and depict often busy lively human interaction.
The detailed and free composition of everyday life are reflected in director Jem Cohen and Cinematographer Peter Roehsler’s narrative. Bruegel’s work is also visually compared to the film’s own observational style. In The Peasant Dance (c. 1569) we’re shown a small detail in the right hand corner of the painting – an egg, a stone, and a broken horseshoe; this is followed by three shots of discarded objects littering a street in Vienna. The decision on Bruegel’s part to include this little collection of found objects clearly resonates with the film’s own interest in observing forgotten detail and composing its own reality. As Johann recites the objects, it draws a parallel with minute and discarded fragments that are integral (and often ignored, unseen) in our shared human spaces.
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