blue riders on film

Some thoughts on

Münter & Kandinsky
Marcus O. Rosenmüller
Germany 2024

I didn't quite get my act together to catch the Münter & Kandinsky exhibition at the Tate Modern this summer, but I made up for it by watching the movie at Dusseldorf, and I also visited the Macke Haus at Bonn and revisited some of the Blue Rider works at the K20 at Dusseldorf this month. Earlier this year, I saw the Kandinsky and af Klint exhibition and read the book about the women of the Blue Rider, so all in all I feel I have my blue riders lined up reasonably well this year.

So, the film - a bit like the one about Hilde Coppi I saw a day earlier - is pegged to the female protagonist being troubled by Nazi officials, and then reflecting on the twists and turns of her life that brought her to this point. Unlike Coppi, Münter manages to outwit the Nazis in that her stash of Kandinsky paintings remains undiscovered when they raid her house. Looking back from that point, it's a pretty straight telling of the story of Münter's life from the time she signed up for Kandinsky's art course in Munich to the time he ghosted her as we would say now.

I've seen critics moaning that there is too much soap opera in this film and not enough art, but I was reasonably happy with the coverage of the art. The artsy angles of the locations, from the light-flooded landscapes to the hand-painted staircases, come out well, and I felt I did get to relate to Münter's creative process sufficiently. I was also excited to see that she appears to have taken lots of photos as well - will look out for those. Maybe the title is a bit of a misnomer, as Kandinsky spends much of the time withdrawing himself from her attentions, and accordingly we see less of him and also get less than perfect insight into his creative work (ironically, IMDB lists a Russian title for the movie which translates as "Kandinsky and his muse" managing to be both offensive and a misrepresentation of the film). Also, the other artists of the group, Marc, Macke, Klee, Jawlensky, Werefkin only drift by rather fleetingly. So to fix that, one could have reduced the time frame to the time when all of them were alive (until 1914) and the title characters were together. Or have separate biopics for the others. I would be really keen on one covering Macke and Klee's trip to Tunis - but that's obviously another story for another movie. But as a Münter biopic, and in terms of flying the flag for female artists wronged by the arts world, this film does the job.

IMDB

PS 25.11. Upon my return I read the review in epd-film - they object that the film does too much telling as opposed to showing, and that it is a lot more conventional than the work of the artists concerned. Which is of course true, but in a biopic, we just want the story of the relevant life or lives to be told. A piece of film art as revolutionary as the Blue Rider paintings were would be interesting but would not serve this purpose. I would also watch it though.