‘Anselm’ Review: Wim Wenders’ Documentary Is A Portrait Of The Artist In 3D – Cannes
deadline.comThough he is still mostly known for his lyrical, America-set road movie Paris, Texas, which won the Palme d’Or in 1984, Germany’s Wim Wenders does most of his best work when he’s back on home turf.
The Berlin Wall, for example, provided the backdrop for his 1987 masterpiece Wings of Desire, in which philosophical angels roamed a divided city that was still trying to reckon with the shame of the Second World War.
His new documentary, Anselm, is ostensibly the biography of a fellow artist, but it doesn’t take too much imagination to read it as a veiled autobiography, in that its subject isn’t so much a person as the way that life experience and intelligence combine to create art.
In that respect, Wenders’ film, a Special Screening at the Cannes Film Festival, will not do much to generate a whole new audience for artist Anselm Kiefer; though his portfolio is astonishing — Shelley’s famous phrase “Look upon my works ye mighty and despair” comes to mind — it remains achingly oblique.
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