Eisenstein In Guanajuato

Director-writer Peter Greenaway has inched toward cinematic masterpieces with such works as "The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover" and his unabashedly naked "Prospero." Now at age 72, Greenaway has made Eisenstein in Guanajuato, without doubt his finest film. It is, first a visual masterpiece, along with being a narratively stunning biopic of visionary gay Russian director Sergei Eisenstein, whose classics "Ten Days That Shook The World" and "Potemkin" changed world cinema.

By the 1930's Eisenstein was so famous in fact that Joseph Stalin allowed him to go to Hollywood to make films. But the director refused to submit to that fantasy factory and escaped to Mexico. There Greenaway tells the story of Eisenstein liberated from his tortured, closeted life when he is seduced by his Mexican guide Palomino (the poetic and smoldering Luis Alberti) and is artistically re-energized. Finnish actor Elmer Back plays Eisenstein with a unforgettable invention and lusty bravado.

Greenaway's cinematography is breathtaking and the art direction of 30s Mexico is an achievements in itself. In homage to Eisenstein, snippets of his films pop up operatically and Greenaway scores the film with music by Prokofiev who was Eisenstein's collaborator on several films. This is the most artistically adventurous films of the year and without doubt Putin is going to hate it. Or maybe.....