In Anselm, which premiered at Cannes in 2023, Wim Wenders applies to the painter and multimedia artist Anselm Kiefer the same 3D treatment he gave to legendary German choreographer Pina Bausch in his lauded 2011 documentary Pina. He achieves a similarly immersive experience here, showcasing Kiefer’s process and artwork in an absorbing fashion unlike any other.
Painting could be taken to be a less visceral art form than Bausch’s propulsive modern dance compositions, but Kiefer would probably disagree. In any case, Wenders is more than up to the challenge of translating the depth and energy of his close friend’s work to the big screen. Shot over a period of two years, the film is stuffed to the brim with arresting images, opening and closing with a whispered journey through La Ribaute, a stunning 200-acre property in the south of France devoted to showcasing Kiefer’s monumental installations in the open air. Here, as the soft sunlight bounces off razor wire and swaying grasses push through shards of rough concrete, the mix of violence and beauty in the artist’s works melts harmoniously into the landscape, seemingly free of the boundaries the artist pushed against for so long.
Born in Germany in the final months of the second world war, Kiefer’s work has always been indelibly wrapped up the darkest corners of German history. Refusing to shy away from the mores and taboos of a polite society eager to forget the horrors of its past, the artist has always sought to directly confront the viewer with massively scaled pieces addressing Nazism, the Holocaust, and the nation’s unrealized cultural potential. Embracing elements of mythology and spirituality in his work, his pieces draw prominently on myriad cultural touchstones from the poetry of Romanian Holocaust survivor Paul Celan to the mythical figure of Lilith.
One of the most successful and well-known artists in the world, the film follows the development of Kiefer’s career as he is at once celebrated abroad and vilified in Germany as a provocateur, new reactionary, a neo-fascist, and worse. “Prodding incessantly at the wound of German history,” as the film puts it, it would take decades for Kiefer’s work to be widely accepted in his home country. For his part, it is interesting to observe his unwavering commitment to his mission. Staging a perpetual protest against forgetting, he appears unbothered by the negative reactions to his work, confident in the process and the significance of the body of work he is creating.
Shying away from the traditional talking head documentary format, Wenders artfully takes the viewer on a journey through Kiefer’s early life, weaving together archival footage and old photographs into cleverly assembled dioramas and visual installations. Combining this method with re-enactments of key moments in the artist’s artistic development, the viewer is effectively invited into Kiefer’s creative process, gaining a deeper understanding of the genesis of some of his most significant works. With Wenders’ great-nephew Anton enlisted to play Kiefer as a child, and Kiefer’s son Daniel to play him as a younger man already in the throes of his artistic career, the film takes on an interestingly intimate quality which is rare for such a largely scaled piece.
My favourite sequences in the film were of Kiefer at work in his various studios, wielding not paints and brushes but blowtorches and barrels of molten lead alongside his team of devoted assistants, all dressed in black like a small army of roadies. Wenders takes the viewer on a fascinating journey of artistic creation, letting us tag along as a Kiefer cycles through his absolutely enormous studio – the Atelier in Croissy, just outside Paris. Whether reading poetry, rifling through bins of materials, or flipping through the pages of books in his drool-worthy library, I found it a treat to feel as though I was watching the ideas bubble up and percolate in his brain. Though some have criticized Anselm as more of an immersive “experience” than a “film,” I disagree. In a similar fashion to Kiefer, Wenders here seeks to experiment with unconventional tools and technologies in the evolution of his own artform, forging new and influential paths and forms for documentary filmmaking.
Anselm is currently streaming on the Criterion Channel.
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