It begins in impressive fashion; with an immaculately conceived floor-length dress standing, uninhabited at the crest of a hill, and yet stood upright, as if an invisible wearer were watching the sun rise over the south of France while being serenaded by sonorous operatic vocals. The dress is one of many sculpted by the hugely successful German artist Anselm Kiefer, often titled for the historical or literary women they are intended to evoke and displayed in the landscape of his vast estate at Barjac as part of the series “Les Femmes Martyres.” Captured in pristine 6K 3D imagery, this drifting shot that opens Wim Wenders’ film about Kiefer evocatively captures the sublime sensation of the moment. Although it does tip its hat towards chronology and narrativisation, Anselm, which premiered as part of the Cannes Film Festival, is absolutely intended as a window through which to uniquely experience Kiefer’s art.
Although the opening sequences take in the various, sometimes curious internal and external landscapes of Kiefer’s hermetic world in southern France, it is only towards the end of the film that the audience is properly introduced to his 100-acre La Ribaute estate. Wenders has ostensibly organised his essay into a series of chapters that depict the artist via the different ateliers he has utilised throughout his prolific career; from the vast studio near Croissy outside Paris that he currently uses, to the far modest abode he had in Hornbach, Germany, back in the 1970s. Embracing the same shifting echoes of history that inspire his subject, Wenders lets these buildings speak to one another, drifting back and forth in time and space. The building themselves may not actually whisper – the dresses of “Les Femmes Martyres” are given voice by Wenders, as if occupied by spectral messengers – but they nonetheless feel haunted by visions of the past.
Engagement with history and mythology is something that has defined Kiefer for many people across his career and in particular his willingness to openly address and probe Germany’s recent past has drawn consternation over the years. While Wenders isn’t so much interested in a blow-by-blow biopic account of Kiefer’s life or career, various of these elements and controversies are woven into the film in different ways. Anselm includes stunning artful compositions that frame Kiefer’s work in situ alongside sequences more reminiscent of direct cinema in which the audience is treated to footage of the artist at work. Sprinkled through this are sections of archival material, and dramatic reconstructions that depict Kiefer as a boy (played by Anton Wenders) and as a young man (played by Daniel Kiefer). Using different combinations of these modes, Wenders engages with the historicity of the subject’s story, but typically with a light touch if not a liberal dashing of obliqueness, artistry, or ambiguity – and sometimes all three.
Through much of the film, the audience watches Kiefer (or one of his younger actor proxies) inhabiting the places in which he did or does reside. He cycles around the 36,000ft atelier at Croissy, pulling up to rifle through draws of photographs or clambering onto a mechanical raising platform to reach the higher areas of colossal canvases. He wanders, contemplatively through the environmental artworks of Barjac. He is both within and outwith these spaces, their architect and their occupant at once – shaping them and shaped by them. The spaces become characters in and of themselves, captured beautifully in three dimensions. Cinematographer Franz Lustig has worked on various Wenders’ projects over the last 20 years including his 2020 3D video installation for Fondation Beyeler in Basel, Two or Three Things I Know About Edward Hopper. Here the stereoscopy is at its most effective when the camera is given free rein to glide around, the dimensions of the image are not employed for the gimmick of something fizzing past the screen, but to immersively position the viewer inside the image.
The overall effect is somewhat dreamlike. The film transports us from Kiefer lying on the ground of a snow-laden forest in Germany in the 1970s to an artwork installed against the sun-baked vistas of France to the spectacular sight of a giant canvas engulfed with flames as organic matter is seared into the patina of the paint. None of these things feel discrete, they flow together to form a sketch that feels diffuse but never disjointed. ‘Myth allows us to understand history beyond the merely rational,’ intones Kiefer at one point, and in Anselm, Wenders seems to have undertaken a similar task. We can revel in the beauty and grandeur of Kiefer’s work and relate to it on a different, more experiential level. Whether Wenders’ approach leaves too much unsaid will probably depend on the individual viewer and their own prior knowledge and opinion of Kiefer’s work and beliefs. What Wenders has done, though, is explore Kiefer’s impressive work in such a way that it can genuinely catch the breath.
Director: Wim Wenders
Cast: Anselm Kiefer, Daniel Kiefer, Anton Wenders
Cinematography: Franz Lustig
Producer: Karsten Brünig
Editing: Maxine Goedicke
Music: Leonard Küssner
Sound: Régis Muller
Set design: Sebastian Soukup, Karin Betzier
Production companies: Road Movies Gmbh (Germany)
Venue: Cannes Film Festival (Special Screenings)
In German, English
93 minutes
