Eisenstein in Guanajuato (2015)

Stylish but barely mediocre overall

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

Peter Greenaway's ambitions and talent are gargantuan, and his achievements, films such as Prospero's Books and The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover, are mighty. Eisenstein in Guanajuato, which chronicles 10 days in the life of Sergei Eisenstein, is not a masterpiece, but is unique in its visual techniques and its inclusion of explicit sex (and anal sex at that!) that make it stand out among biographical films. It would have been helpful to have read a biography of Eisenstain before seeing the movie, and to have recently viewed 10 Days that Shook the World and The Battleship Potemkin and Que Viva Mexico. Nevertheless, I was thrilled by the cinematography which used techniques that I have never seen used in quite the way they are used here. For example, scenes shift quickly and often from B&W to color, and sometimes use both B&W and color in the same frame. There is one amazing scene that seems to take place at a street corner, but gradually the building behind Sergei straightens out and reveals itself to be the straight facade of a mid-block building. Every reference to an Eisenstein movie is accompanied by a shot of that actual movie. Every name dropped by the characters is accompanied by a photo of the actual person whose name was dropped. It helps in understanding the movie.The most thrilling thing about the movie, for me, is the inclusion of a rather explicit gay sex scene. It is Sergei's first time having sex, and he seduced by a very handsome young man, his handler and interpreter, who joyously teaches Sergei about the Mexican siesta, and has Sergei undress. Sergei is quite uncomfortable about his body (the actor playing him is rather ungainly, like Sergei was). Sergei does not think that anyone would want to have sex with him, no man, no woman. The handler assures Sergei that he is wrong, and proceeds, graphically, and erotically, to enter the Eisenstein anus. I rarely get aroused by non- porn movies, but this scene is one that I think about often, and fondly. The notion that an unsexy man can been seen as sexy and can become sexual, is one that I appreciate. And so, Viva Greenaway!

I have not seen any of Greenaway's previous movies, and while I have seen Potemkin, I barley knew anything about (the actual) Eisenstein going in.What I loved about this movie: The editing is fantastic. It plays around with the format, having real life photos of the characters and the locations next to characters as they are mentioned, playing with angles and positions of the characters, experimenting with colors, and obviously, using montages in a great way. I hope this is all based on Eisenstein's actual writings about the subject, as it is clear that he has thoughts about what movies can do with these tools.That's the one positive thing I have to say about this movie. The characters are stylized into cartoon characters, and the dialog is boring and unengaging. The actual storyline is very forgettable. Greenaway chose to have the movie focus on Eisenstein's experiences in Mexico, but did not include any of the actual movie-making Eisenstein did there. To me, that would have been a more interesting movie - but I can understand that Greenaway had a different vision for this story.The sexual scenes were graphical, but not grotesque or provoking (unless you are provoked by homosexuality).

Ordinarily I can take Peter Greenaway or leave him alone -- chiefly the latter. But he really scores this time with a story that has longed to be told.As is known Sergei Eisenstein hoped to work in Hollywood in the early thirties just as sound came in. But thanks to aright-wing campaign (plus its own lack of imagination) Paramount Pictures was scared off from making films of with of the scripts the great Russian director had written : an adaptation of Dreiser's "An American Tragedy" and an original historical drama "Sutter's Gold." The novelist Upton Sinclair stepped in and elected to back a film Eisenstein wanted to make about Mexico. But he knew nothing about film production and less about Eisenstein's highly improvisatory working methods. Under-budgeted and best by problems the shoot was brought to a halt when Sinclair's brother-in-law, Hunter Kimbrough discovered SME was having too much fun south of the border. Moreover he got a gander at the great man's cache of frankly gay pornographic drawings. Eisenstein not only never got to edit "Que Viva Mexico" -- he never even saw the rushes. He returned to Russia where he made "Alexander Nevsky" and "Ivam the Terrible" Sinclair meanwhile had the "Que Viva Mexico" footage sliced and diced into travelogues.This is the backdrop of what Greenaway has done which s to present Eisenstein's Mexican sojourn as a sexual awakening. He falls madly in love (and lust) with a handsome guide. Greenaway brings the full bore of his visual imagination to telling this tale with multiple images and lighting the likes of which hasn't been seen since Sternberg. Elmer Back is superb as SME and Luis Alberti is equally great as his love interest. Not to be missed.

EISENSTEIN IN GUANAJUATO is elder British auteur Greenaway's extravagant view of the famous Russian film pioneer he claims to admire immensely. The World Premiere presented at the 2015 Berlin Film Festival was an outrageously colorful ball buster, much better than expected after numerous previous Greenaway fiascos seen over the years ~ In fact, a glorious raucous Wakeup Call in the wake of a string of big name festival soporifics earlier in the week. The film bursts forth immediately with numerous three-way split screens bulging with highly informative and educational archival footage~~ almost too many messages to absorb at a single sitting.Most outrageous of all, we see the revered cinema Grandmaster Eisenstein presented In unabashed full frontal nude glory as a gloating Fag (extinct word for "gay") --receiving rectal penis injection from handsome Mexican producer and new found Latin lover (Luis Alberti) who introduces the austere Russian filmmaker to the pleasures of alternative sexual orientation. Presumably about Eisenstein's trip to Mexico in 1931 to make his legendary lost film which was later pieced together from existing fragments by others -- his grandiose epic collage "QUE VIVA MEJICO!". Finnish born Actor Elmer Bäck (b. 1981) is no dead ringer for the real Eisenstein but the wild wiry genius hairdo serves to identify the character. This is actually more about the fun he had there than the making of the famous movie -- thought to be lost for many years -- which is a story in itself. Just remember that Guanajuato is a city in Mexico, not to be confused with GUANTÀNAMO, the infamous CIA water-boarding school in Cuba. Bring along your Mexican jumping beans and an open mind. Not for every taste, but then -- What is? Eisenstein purists may consider all this an insult to his memory while others may see it as a loose tribute to be taken with a few grains of salt.It is well worth quoting the director's own view of the subject of his film: "The venerated filmmaker Eisenstein is comparable in talent, insight and wisdom, with the likes of Shakespeare or Beethoven; there are few - if any - directors who can be elevated to such heights. On the back of his revolutionary film Battleship Potemkin, he was celebrated around the world, and invited to the US. Ultimately rejected by Hollywood and maliciously maligned by conservative Americans, Eisenstein traveled to Mexico in 1931 to consider a film privately funded by American pro-Communist sympathizers, headed by the American writer Upton Sinclair. Eisenstein's sensual Mexican experience appears to have been pivotal in his life and film career - a significant hinge between the early successes of Strike, Battleship Potemkin, and October, which mad him a world-renowned figure, and his hesitant later career with Alexander Nevsky, Ivan the Terrible and The Boyar's Plot". Peter Greenaway Hmm -- xMakes one wonder about Greenaway's own orientation ...N'est-ce pas?