New York-based filmmaker Jem Cohen has etched out an impressively understated career, as an independent documentarian and film-essayist amidst a thoroughly mainstream climate. MUSEUM HOURS extends his proclivity for creating observational portraits of urban landscapes, only this time he attaches it to a careful deconstruction of the notions of spectatorship and the relationship between cinema and art.

Neatly aligned with a compassionate story of two lost souls, planting the seeds of a deeply understanding friendship in and amongst the city of Vienna, Cohen’s film is perfectly pitched and languidly paced. The velvety, charismatic Bobby Sommer plays Johann, a middle-aged man revelling in the peace and quiet his job as an attendant at the Kunsthistorisches Art Museum provides him. Wise, intelligent and contentedly lonely, Johann spends his days observing both the artwork he is boundlessly fascinated with and the museum’s visitors. Recognising he has little in common with his colleagues and preferring to gaze into the serene abyss of the artwork, Johann finds stimulation in solitude, playing online poker and reflecting on his eventful past.

…Cohen’s film is perfectly pitched and languidly paced.

His self-inflicted alienation from the world is cracked, however, when he encounters Anne (Mary Margaret O’Hara), a Canadian woman visiting Vienna while her estranged cousin lays dormant in a coma. A stranger in a strange land, Anne’s immediate and infectious likability quickly gels with Johann’s sullen inscrutability. The two form a bond, with Johann taking it upon himself to act as her makeshift tour guide, relishing the opportunity to impart his knowledge and wisdom about the city, its art and architecture, with which he is totally enamoured. Beginning to see his city in a luminous new light, Johann’s disenchantment with humanity begins to thaw away as he, like Anne, discovers a city he seems to have fallen out of touch with.

Charming and patiently structured, MUSEUM HOURS is as much a love letter to Vienna as it is to cinema…

Charming and patiently structured, MUSEUM HOURS is as much a love letter to Vienna as it is to cinema, with the characters of Anne and Johann effectively acting as tour guides and ciphers for Cohen and his camera to explore this luminous city. Sat alongside Johann’s knowledgeable prompts and illuminations of the city’s past, Vienna is depicted as something of a casual underscore to the predominant story, its beauty (appreciatively captured by Cohen) reflecting the budding relationship between the two forlorn protagonists. Encouraging Johann’s thoughts and observations to turn towards valuing and studying the world around him, the friendship he shares with Anne is refreshingly plutonic and based on each character’s penchant for deconstructing their thoughts, feelings and emotions.

Occasionally transcending the sedateness of the museum, Cohen’s film comes alive when its characters are either sharing anecdotes about themselves or just merely watching the culture around them drift by. A sweet-natured story of two people coming together, MUSEUM HOURS is a leisurely tour of Vienna in which we as an audience observe various works of art and the people viewing them.