Robert Powell plays Gustav Mahler, Georgina Hale plays Alma Mahler (when she wasn't Alma Gropius, Alma Werfel or fooling around with some other Viennese) and England plays Austria in this visually stunning movie by Ken Russell.
I'm not generally fond of Russell's movies, but this one is intended as a fantasia in which Mahler's music is used for balletic pieces, often using a lot of Nazi symbolism. It's the sort of over-the-top visuals that Russell often used (along with a lot of homoerotic imagery) that usually makes me simply roll my eyes. Here it actually works, and works brilliantly. The story-telling around it is not as compelling; Russell's idea of biography is not mine. However, that isn't really the point of this film.
I'm not generally fond of Russell's movies, but this one is intended as a fantasia in which Mahler's music is used for balletic pieces, often using a lot of Nazi symbolism. It's the sort of over-the-top visuals that Russell often used (along with a lot of homoerotic imagery) that usually makes me simply roll my eyes. Here it actually works, and works brilliantly. The story-telling around it is not as compelling; Russell's idea of biography is not mine. However, that isn't really the point of this film.