Johann (Bobby Sommer) works as an attendant in an Austrian museum, a job which suits him to a tee as he relishes the quiet atmosphere after his two previous jobs, one as a tutor in an industrial workshop and the other, earlier, in the music industry, employed by touring bands as befitting his roots as a former punk. One day he is at the museum when he is stopped by a Canadian woman, Anne (Mary Margaret O'Hara), who asks for directions to the hospital: she has dropped everything back home since her cousin, who she has not seen in years, has fallen into a coma in Vienna and Anne seems to be her only living relative.
A defiantly arthouse film, Museum Hours was one of the rare fiction projects by director Jem Cohen, usually a documentarian, though that was not to say you should go into this film expecting a conventional narrative. That was to point out there was one there and it was ostensibly quite a simple one - foreigner makes friends with local as they bond over their love of high art - but quite a lot of this was as observational as you might be expected to be should you ever decide to enter a museum for an hour or two and take a look around. That establishment in question was the Kunsthistorisches Art Museum in Vienna, which displayed a wide range of paintings and sculptures.
Indeed, it has a reputation as one of the finest in the world, so little wonder Cohen thought it perfect to explore with his camera in scenes which it's hard to deny come across like lectures. But not in a tedious manner - though there were all too many who found his movie just didn't move as much as they would like, its deliberate pace stubbornly refusing to generate anything like a conventional excitement or intrigue as a drama might traditionally supply. However, if you preferred to take in existence with a truly interested eye instead of rushing through it in the hope of the next distraction captivating you for a minute or two, then there was much to like here.
Johann delivers narration for us to ruminate over, often quite irreverently, as he shares his thoughts on the museum to its visitors to the state of Austrian politics and the artworks' place in modern culture, pop and otherwise. Quite a bit of this conjures up amusing and stimulating musings, such as the young Marxist student who used to work with him and observed a lot of these paintings hanging in the galleries were the equivalent of gangsta rap videos of today with their emphasis on demonstrating the wealth and influence of their subjects and patrons, and Johann also points out many of the nudes are barely a step away from softcore porn, which can be embarrassing to be around.
But then there's the fact that within the walls of the museum there are so many reference points to life as lived centuries ago that it's unavoidable much is still relevant, as you have to assume many of the historical concerns are shared by us in this stage in time as well. There's a fascinating sequence where a tour guide discusses the Pieter Bruegel exhibition, filling in the artist's background and shooting down the art snobs who think he was all class by drawing attention to just how down and dirty he got with his subjects (such as his fondness for depicting people taking a shit hidden away in the detail) which not only connects to the art of now, but also the documentary stylings of director Cohen. As for Anne, she is something of a passive but interested presence, being played by cult Canadian singer O'Hara she naturally is asked to trill a couple of tunes, and comes across as both engaging and engaged. Obviously this is not going to appeal to everyone, but if you wanted a fresh way of seeing art and by extension your environment, Museum Hours was undeniably diverting.
