A scene from Museum Hours.
A slow meander through Vienna's Kunsthistorisches Art Museum and the lives of a museum guard and a woman visiting from Montreal. Canadian artist and singer Mary Margaret O'Hara plays the woman, who arrives in Austria due to a medical emergency, yet spends a lot of time wandering the museum and befriending the guard (played by the non-professional actor Bobby Sommer). Listening to a tour guide describe the sixteenth-century paintings of Pieter Bruegel in detail makes for a nice interlude. It's also clear from that scene that the film is as much about broken conversation as hushed silences. Yet despite the way the film deliberately transposes the slow pace and quiet of a museum onto daily life, Museum Hours requires a lot from its viewers while offering only a whispered thank you in return.
At VIFF: Oct. 11, 12 p.m. Granville 1
At TIFF: Sunday Sept. 9, 4:30, TIFF Bell Lightbox 3; Tuesday Sept. 11, 6:00 p.m., Cineplex Yonge & Dundas 9; Friday Sept. 14, 8:45 p.m., Cineplex Yonge & Dundas 10