Anselm
As Wim Wenders ponders the art of the German painter and sculptor Anselm Kiefer, we witness two artists at work.
On a technological level, the crucial fact about this new documentary by Wim Wenders lies in its ability to outshine its predecessor, 2011’s Pina. That film about the choreographer Pina Bausch found Wenders putting 3D to good use and it was Oscar-nominated. Now he has turned to that same technique again in paying tribute to another German artist, this time a living one: Anselm Kiefer. If the earlier experience gave him practice with 3D, it is also the case that with the passing of time the cameras required for its use have become more mobile and the assurance and fluidity to be found in Anselm are striking. As it happens, I was unable to view the film at a press screening but even home viewing provides images in which the sense of depth is apparent and the success of presenting this new work in 3D with 6K resolution is admirably clear.
However, despite this triumph of technique, I feel that it is something else entirely that marks out Anselm as truly special. There have been many documentaries made about the life and work of artists but, however competent they have been, few if any have been films that are clearly works of art in their own right. Anselm is an exception to that, for what we have here is one artist, Wenders, commenting on the work of another, Kiefer, and doing so in a way that creates its own art as it looks at that of Anselm. This means that Anselm adopts an approach that sidesteps all the more usual elements found in documentary biopics: there are no contributions from interviewees, nothing about Anselm Kiefer’s private life and no overt attempt to aid the uninitiated to appreciate his work.
What we have instead is a film which, shot over two years, shows the man himself busy at his craft and lets us see examples of his painting and sculpture. In exploring these works Wenders expresses his own eye for them and the artistry with which he does it is perfectly illustrated in the opening minutes of the film. The first pieces by Kiefer shown to us are examples of what have come to be known as his headless women seen in an outdoor setting. In fact, these are busts of women dressed in white but lacking heads as such and so making a comment on the invisibility of women in history. That aim emerges in later talk about them, but what is so striking from the outset is the way in which the camera sees them and then circles around them accompanied by perfectly chosen music which starts out instrumentally before revealing itself as a song performed in German. Indeed, the music for Anselm is some of the best in any film seen this year.
The very fact of seeing Kiefer in work settings including a former brick factory in Germany and an estate, La Ribaute, where his work is now displayed at Barjac in France serves to emphasise the vast scale of his canvases. Indeed, the film touches on the series of ateliers, all large, in which he has worked over the years. Some past history comes up both in scenes where the younger Kiefer is represented as a child by Anton Wenders (a grand-nephew of the director) and as a young adult by Daniel Kiefer (son of Anselm) and in the use of archive material. The latter, itself presented in 3D, includes footage which refers to the controversies that have arisen around Anselm Kiefer and his art, in particular the hostility that arose in 1969 when an action piece found him in uniform making the Nazis salute thus leading to accusations that he should be regarded as a Neo-Nazi.
That Wenders does not share that view is, of course, obvious, and indeed he is here offering what might be considered a thesis. Although Anselm Kiefer is naturally central here, four artists important to him also come under the spotlight. Two of them are not Germans but wrote in the German language, these being the poets Paul Celan who was Romanian and Jewish and Ingeborg Bachmann who was Austrian. The other two were German: the artist, art theorist and teacher Joseph Beuys and the philosopher Martin Heidegger. The latter’s Nazi stance is noted but Kiefer approves of Heidegger's later refusal to hide how he had erred in that respect. Indeed, this brings us to the nub of Anselm. In a famous statement made during the First World War Wilfred Owen said that all a poet can do today is warn. Offering a variation on that belief, this film asks us to accept that any artist marked by what Germany did in the Second World War has a duty to ensure that that issue is not allowed to be forgotten. All four influencers were born much earlier but fall into this category nevertheless and Anselm Kiefer, born in 1945, recognises that same duty, as does Wenders also born in that year.
In the first half of Anselm the scenes from the past that are re-enacted fit well and feel unforced, but later on there is rather too much intercutting between Kiefer today and the boy he was. Perhaps these scenes are linked to the concept outlined at the close that childhood is an empty space and marks the beginning of a world. But by then we have already got the point that being born in Germany in 1945 was crucial in making Kiefer and Wenders the artists that they are. These final scenes are certainly not the most effective in the film but considered as a whole Anselm is a very fine illustration of the work of two men who believe that first and foremost art is something that exists not to console but to disturb.
MANSEL STIMPSON
Featuring Anselm Kiefer, Daniel Kiefer and Anton Wenders.
Dir Wim Wenders, Pro Karsten Brünig, Screenplay Wim Wenders, Ph Franz Lustig, Pro Des Karin Betzler and Sebastian Soukup, Ed Maxine Goedicke, Music Leonard Küßner, Cos Heike Fademrecht.
Road Movies Film Productions-Curzon.
93 mins. Germany. 2023. US Rel: 11 October 2023. UK Rel: 8 December 2023. Cert. PG.
