Museum Hours

Set in large part within the grand Kunsthistorisches Art Museum in Vienna, the latest feature from writer/director Jem Cohen (Benjamin Smoke) tells the appealing, low-key story of Johann (Bobby Sommer), a philosophical museum guard who befriends Anne (Mary Margaret O'Hara), an enigmatic visitor who has never been to Vienna before, in town to look after her cousin who is in a coma at the hospital. Anne and Johann gradually become friends as he helps her with translation, muses on the artwork at the museum, and introduces her to some of the sights of the city. The striking museum setting, with its roomful of Brueghel paintings, recalls The Mill and the Cross and Russian Ark. As Anne and Johann venture outside of the museum, it feels as if each place they visit is infused with elements from the paintings they admire. Striking yet subtle, Cohen's camera reveals how a moment in everyday life, contemplated with insight, can slide into the realm of timeless painterly bliss.