The Mystery of Hammeshoi
The Mystery of Hammershoi is most certainly the least popular from the whole bunch of TV documentaries that Michael Palin has done for BBC. And it`s so for a good reason. After all you couldn`t expect millions of people to go stark raving mad for a one hour program about some semi-obscure Danish painter who died almost a hundred years ago.
I`m practically sure that Michael did this show on his own initiative - that he wasn`t commissioned by the BBC to make it but he came up with the offer of it himself. You see, Michael Palin is a fan and a collector of Hammershoi`s work so he thought that it could be useful both for himself and the others if he went to several places where Hammershoi had lived and took a closer look at his life and work.
Basically that`s it - Palin visits Hammershoi`s home in Denmark, he talks to people at Art Galleries, he describes why he considers Hammershoi such a great painter and he makes some jokes on the way, because he can`t do otherwise. If I had a little more interest in art I would probably had enjoyed this show much more but so I can only say that its craftily done and Palin presents Hammershoi as good as he can but... it`s very hard for me to find much to remember in a documentary on a subject that I`m not thrilled about at all. It`s like I was asked to taste some great vintage wine from a small Romanian vineyard - not being a fan of wine at all I would be very unlikely to enjoy this special kind of it anyway. So in short it was perhaps a silly idea to watch this film at all and it would be much more reasonable for me to see "The Hemingway Adventure". But in case you are an artsy person with some taste for Vermeer and so on, you might enjoy this one much more than I did.
I`m practically sure that Michael did this show on his own initiative - that he wasn`t commissioned by the BBC to make it but he came up with the offer of it himself. You see, Michael Palin is a fan and a collector of Hammershoi`s work so he thought that it could be useful both for himself and the others if he went to several places where Hammershoi had lived and took a closer look at his life and work.
Basically that`s it - Palin visits Hammershoi`s home in Denmark, he talks to people at Art Galleries, he describes why he considers Hammershoi such a great painter and he makes some jokes on the way, because he can`t do otherwise. If I had a little more interest in art I would probably had enjoyed this show much more but so I can only say that its craftily done and Palin presents Hammershoi as good as he can but... it`s very hard for me to find much to remember in a documentary on a subject that I`m not thrilled about at all. It`s like I was asked to taste some great vintage wine from a small Romanian vineyard - not being a fan of wine at all I would be very unlikely to enjoy this special kind of it anyway. So in short it was perhaps a silly idea to watch this film at all and it would be much more reasonable for me to see "The Hemingway Adventure". But in case you are an artsy person with some taste for Vermeer and so on, you might enjoy this one much more than I did.
2007-11-03
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