» Director: Peter Greenaway
»Writer: Peter Greenaway
»Stars: Elmer Bäck, Luis Alberti, Maya Zapata
Sergei Eisenstein, the maker of Battleship Potemkin, amounts to 'God of filmmaking' to a great number of movie buffs and students. He was all — a master craftsman, the proponent of montage and a film theorist; however all these only until you watch Peter Greenaway's Eisenstein in Guanajuato.
The film, in early 2015, presents Eisenstein's troubled times in Mexico, where he wanted to shoot a film after being ditched by the Hollywood. Presented as an extremely eccentric person, Eisenstein undergoes some unusual experience, which could be called a game between sex and death in which he gets trapped.
The film focusses on the alleged amorous relationship between Eisenstein and Palomino Canedo, his young male guide in Mexico. The film features 10 days in 1931 in which you see the master filmmaker naked (alone and with Palomino), vomiting, sweating, howling and whatever.
True that the film's fast narrative suits the theme with repeated use of editing techniques in which Eisenstein was a master. The film throughout juxtaposes the fictional screen with real life images of Eisenstein himself and his contemporaries, apparently in a bid to make it look more historic.
Finnish actor Elmer Back lives the Eisenstein that the British director Peter Greenaway wanted to look like — eccentric, fragile, fearful about sex, lost in thought and the list goes on.
And the question as to how much real Eisenstein is in the film remains unanswered, leaving the Eisenstein fan devastated by the portrayal of their hero.
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