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      Museum Hours

      Released Jun 28, 2013 1h 47m Drama List
      95% Tomatometer 73 Reviews 61% Audience Score 1,000+ Ratings A Vienna museum guard befriends a visitor, and the two explore their lives, the city and the ways artwork reflects the world. Read More Read Less Watch on Fandango at Home Buy Now

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      Critics Consensus

      Its languid pace may frustrate some viewers, but for patient filmgoers, Museum Hours offers a carefully observed portrait of the human condition.

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      Critics Reviews

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      J. Hoberman ARTINFO.com Museum Hours offers neither a city symphony nor a love story but a serenely eccentric way of looking. Feb 22, 2019 Full Review Isabel Stevens Sight & Sound Emotion is often considered the enemy by experimental filmmakers, but Cohen's films depend on it. Jun 15, 2016 Full Review Michael Phillips Chicago Tribune Sommer is perfect. So is O'Hara. This is the "Before Sunrise" for a very different (and platonic) pair of individuals. Rated: 4/4 Mar 6, 2014 Full Review Dustin Chang Floating World Gently weaving real life and chance encounters of these two people with numerous paintings in the museum, the film is a sublime beauty. Feb 24, 2021 Full Review David Walsh World Socialist Web Site Cohen's film is quietly, carefully and honestly made. At times perhaps, one would like to see a few more fireworks in the drama, but an elegant, sensitive film in defense of life and art ... how many of those do we have at present? Feb 12, 2021 Full Review Jordan M. Smith IONCINEMA.com Subtle in its emotional grounding and profound in its ability to harness art history to question the world's current relationship with it, Museum Hours is nothing less than a brilliant film. Rated: 4/5 Nov 12, 2020 Full Review Read all reviews

      Audience Reviews

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      Audience Member This has its moments of grace, such as the songs sung in the privacy of a cramped hotel room. The docent's talk about Breugel's paintings was instructive. The shots of art in the museum cut with shots from the streets of Vienna seem to say, "Here, this is art too! Don't forget." The story that propels the narrative is not important at all, nor was most of the dialogue. Rated 2.5 out of 5 stars 02/18/23 Full Review Ned P The kind of pretentious bore that critics love to tout to each other. A potentially poignant story of a woman saying goodbye to her critically ill cousin is submerged in a plotless mess of half-bright platitudes interspersed with shots of a chilly winter Vienna that made me want to take a plane to the French Riviera. Even the shots of the museum's artwork are marred by second-rate cinematograpy. A must-miss. Rated 1 out of 5 stars 02/16/18 Full Review Audience Member "Museum Hours" moves slowly but the intervals between the narrations give us time to fully digest and understand what we experienced before the next phase is presented. There is also the comparison of the past event to the immediate moment and the realization that some things are beyond human comprehension. The film shows that so much escapes our notice. It also shows how different are our individual viewpoints. It is a walking through way of experiencing art through living it. Rated 5 out of 5 stars 01/21/23 Full Review Audience Member One of the most peaceful films I've ever seen. A chance human connection casts beauty and warmth over a nameless man's simple life in a seemingly prosaic town. Rated 5 out of 5 stars 01/23/23 Full Review Audience Member A weirdly fascinating blend of poetry and documentary, Museum Hours had me captivated for most of its running time. Somehow, with its mix of art education, tourism, and focus on human psychology, I was stimulated by seemingly banal visual montages of everyday, modern European city life. I loved the analysis of the Dutch painter Pieter Bruegel and how his "genre painting" of peasant life in the 16th century informed the look at modern 21st century life through the eyes of the museum guard and his verbal diary. This is definitely a piece of filmmaking to be studied, enjoyed, and revisited periodically with new eyes to see what new details can be gleamed from it. Rated 3 out of 5 stars 01/28/23 Full Review Audience Member This is a quiet movie meditating on friendship, art and reality, and the under-fabric of living. Nothing really happened, and there is no strong emotion nor expression. If this film tells no story, it gives us a rumination of human consciousness both lives in the individual's present time (Anne and Johann) and the life in the collective's past (museum's art pieces) and present (Vienna's street and people). Rated 5 out of 5 stars 02/19/23 Full Review Read all reviews Post a rating

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      Movie Info

      Synopsis A Vienna museum guard befriends a visitor, and the two explore their lives, the city and the ways artwork reflects the world.
      Director
      Jem Cohen
      Producer
      Jem Cohen, Gabriele Kranzelbinder, Paolo Calamita
      Screenwriter
      Jem Cohen
      Distributor
      Cinema Guild
      Genre
      Drama
      Original Language
      German
      Release Date (Theaters)
      Jun 28, 2013, Limited
      Release Date (Streaming)
      Jun 16, 2014
      Runtime
      1h 47m
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