The Great Museum

The Great Museum takes us on a tour of the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, a museum of great history, splendar and beauty. The main focus is on the details and execution of the stunning Kunsstkammer galleries renovation and reinstallation. We spend time seeing how the museum works, meeting the faces behind the scenes. Many deal with the mundane tasks from looking after the small details (Moth catchers and steaming team) to those people in charge of the major events (The installation of the exhibitions and decision making on displays.) All elements come together to create a space within this museum for masterpieces to be adored.

Taking two years to film and filmed in the direct cinema style of documentary film making, this is an event film. This once in a generation event could have been captured under much less interesting and appealing form. The film isn’t dry or bogged down in details that aren’t relevant to the wider audience appreciation of the tasks at hand. The level of work that has gone into it deserves acknowledgement above all else and for that the whole team are to be applauded. The day to day observations are intimate and delicate but also are filmed in a way that doesn’t tire or disengage a casual or hardened viewer.

It is true that direct documentary is about the events unfolding without narration and without intrusion of the personal. The viewer is given a human eye on a very awe inspiring space. Human elements are respected and as much a part of the work as the pieces within the museum itself. The handling of this is done with care and compassion for the subjects. It is rare for a documentary film maker not to do this but within this piece is an exceptional care to not isolate the viewer from the person behind the objects. We see politics, personality and passion among the crafts people but they aren’t treated as oddities, more human doings.

Visually the film is stunning. It holds the exhibitions in a world as temporal as the museum space but also in a way a spiritual frame. This allows them to be at one divine and real. This may sound a little arty farty but this film isn't that at all. It is so good at telling its views that you will feel a place within it. Natural beauty and soft spaces are counterposed with the cluttered of research and design, the empty stores and the full holding bay of coaches feel ghostly but magical.

I loved the film and would highly recommend it to anyone. You can casually watch it and you can explore the intricate details of the world. It can be watched with a eye on the works or it can be watched with an eye on the people. Its only failing was it was short in places, where you wish to know more. In the end though that is how life is, is it not….?