If you’ve ever spent a lazy Saturday morning moseying through the Dallas Museum of Art (or any other one of your favorite area art museums, really) then you’ve probably been overcome with the sudden mental awareness that comes with being alone with your thoughts in a quiet, aesthetically pleasing room.
“Museum Hours,” Jem Cohen’s surprisingly satisfying feature, is the cinematic equivalent of this feeling.
What’s so great about this movie is how accessible and, more importantly, how relatable Cohen’s story makes the art world seem.
Too often in popular culture, the art world and the entities and characters that make it up are written off as one-beat story lines or characters, usually in a snooty, stuck-up way.
In Cohen’s world, museums act as the planet’s crossroads bringing together the most unlikely of pairings. It is through this concept where “Museum Hours” finds
its plot.
Bobby Sommer plays the film’s protagonist Johann, a nice enough security guard in the Kunsthistorisches Art Museum in Vienna, Austria.
When Mary Margaret O’Hara’s Anne, a wide-eyed Canadian tourist filled with wonderment encounters Johann, the two immediately strike up a bond that is based on the museum’s beautiful art.
The movie is much like a slow walk in an art museum, sometimes a little repetitive, but with each turn around a corner waits a new and delightful surprise.
The film’s microbial cast keeps the story tight and entertaining while Cohen’s direction showcases the best of the Kunsthistorisches Art Museum.
“Museum Hours” opens today at the Angelika Dallas and Plano.
