Hilma
Lasse Hallström explores the life of the Swedish abstract painter Hilma af Klint.
All in the mind: Tora Hallström as Hilma and Tom Wlaschiha as Rudolf Steiner
One might not accuse Lasse Hallström of being the most innovative and daring of filmmakers. From ABBA – The Movie (1977) to the critically reviled The Nutcracker and the Four Realms (2018), his output has been spotty, to say the least. Now comes a deeply personal project starring his daughter (Tora Hallström) and wife (Lena Olin) as young and older versions of the Swedish painter and mystic Hilma af Klint. As Hilma af Klint is still a relatively unknown artist, Hallström has opted to shoot the film in English, presumably so his film can appeal to as large an international audience as possible. Nonetheless, it is very niche and, at times, quite batty, but this is not necessarily a bad thing. Anybody who dedicates their life and livelihood to art must be a little mad, and Hilma would certainly seem to be that, openly acknowledging the spirit world to be the guiding force of her brush.
Today, Hilma af Klint is recognised as being one of the first and foremost abstract painters, pre-dating Kandinsky and Mondrian. Many an artist’s film biography has focussed more on the man than his art, something Hallström has avoided, bringing a new understanding and nuance to the canvas of the non-figurative painter. He starts his film with a series of scenes of hide-and-seek, played out by Hilma and her little sister Hermina (Emmi Tjernström), revealing the strong bond between the two. When Hermina develops a cough, one fears the worst, and Hilma is not permitted to say her goodbyes, reinforcing a spiritual connection with the child that was to inform Hilma’s work throughout her adult life. Already Hallström is exhibiting a strong pictorial elegance, but when his subject’s art takes on a more abstract nature, so the director’s cinematic style changes accordingly. Indeed, his film is one of exquisite beauty, his Stockholm street scenes in particular taking on a painterly, almost impressionistic mien.
Of course, Hilma was way ahead of her time, and is repeatedly told that nobody understands her art, initially including her hero, Rudolf Steiner, who is dismissed as an “old codger from Germany.” It is heart-breaking that Hilma set so much store by Steiner, in fact a highly influential Austrian philosopher and something of a rock star in his day. Hilma’s own mother asks, “you’re not going to paint for eternity, are you?”, while her nephew insists, “nobody understands what you’re doing.” But Hilma was driven to paint on by the spirit world, to make the invisible visible, by her own means.
Lasse Hallström’s film is unlikely to appeal to everybody, but it’s a brave, extraordinary, strangely moving and at times transformative piece. When, exposed to a Kandinsky canvas for the first time, Hilma faints, you may laugh, although those who know Kandinsky and his synaesthesia may well gasp. But it was Rudolf Steiner himself who said that “colour is the soul of nature and the universe and through colour we receive messages from the soul”, although he was never to get a handle on Hilma’s own driven approach to the medium. The finale (which recalls Stephen Sondheim’s tribute to the great pointillist Georges Seurat, in Sunday in the Park with George), certainly left a lump in the throat of this critic.
JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
Cast: Lena Olin, Tora Hallström, Catherine Chalk, Jazzy De Lisser, Lily Cole, Rebecca Calder, Maeve Dermody, Tom Wlaschiha, Anna Björk, Clare Holman, Adam Lundgren, Jens Hultén, Emmi Tjernström, Martin Wallström, Lukas Loughran.
Dir Lasse Hallström, Pro Helena Danielsson, Lasse Hallström and Sigurjon Sighvatsson, Screenplay Lasse Hallström, Ph Ragna Jorming, Pro Des Catharina Nyqvist Ehrnrooth, Ed Dino Jonsäter, Music Jon Ekstrand, Costumes Flore Vauville, Sound Andreas Franck, Dialect coaches Mel Churcher and Hugh O’Shea.
Nordic Entertainment Group/Viaplay Studios-Guerilla Films.
119 mins. Sweden. 2022. UK Rel: 28 October 2022. Cert. TBC.
