Being John Malkovich was one of, if not the, strangest movies I have ever seen. Klimt is similarly strange, but not quite that strange. Like Russell Crowe's John Nash in A Beautiful Mind, Klimt hallucinates people, and in a similar way, you, in the audience are just as confused about who is real and who is imaginary. You are only gradually let in on understanding this.
The movie is decorated with dozens of naked women who mainly parade about, or who try to seduce Klimt. Given that he is not particularly handsome, charming or intelligent, I failed to see the attraction. Perhaps it was just his fame as a painter.
The interiors and costumes are opulent turn of the century Vienna. Elaborate Viennese pastries tempt the eye. The sets are the main appeal of the movie.
There is a lot of cat and mouse dialogue where the characters reveal nothing and say nothing while attempting to sound profound. It is all quite frustrating.
Nikolai Kinski plays the homosexual painter Egon Schiele in an exaggeratedly swish way, reminiscent of Da'an's hand gestures in Earth Final Conflict.
The costumes and hair treatments are so elaborate, that I could not for the life of me tell the female characters apart. Is this a new character or an old one in a new do? The characters all behave the same way and look similar. I didn't develop any bond with any of the characters because I could not even tell them apart.
