MAHLER

KEN RUSSELL

Russell had long been an admirer of Mahler’s music. He said he based the film on “the rondo form in music where you present the theme and follow it with variations, then return to the theme and so on. My theme was the composer‘s last train journey before he died. During the journey we flash back to incidents in his life, the variations on the theme as it were. They vary from passion to comedy. Like the scherzos from his symphonies some of the scenes are pretty grotesque, too.”
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The Garden of Earthly Delights
Based on his own novel “Metaphysics”, Lech Wajewski’s film is an erotic treatise on art, love and death. When British art historian Claudine learns that her cancer is terminal, she abandons caution and takes her lover, Chris, on an extraordinary journey to Venice, where their passion finds fulfillment in the fantastic paintings of Hieronymus Bosch. Videotaping their trip, Claudine intends to leave Chris a haunting record of their emotional and spiritual discoveries.