It is difficult to imagine that a movie that in any way pertains to Gustav Mahler could fall so flat. But of course this movie isn't about Gustav Mahler. You just want it to be. And you watch it hoping that it will be. It is instead about his pedestrian wife, Alma. Here are her notable achievements worthy of a movie about her life: she married Gustav Mahler. That's it. The marriage was routine. She gave up her "future" as a composer in her own right (that seems to have mostly been in her own mind) in order to be a wife and mother, resented it from time to time, had an affair, her husband (Mahler) died, she had another affair, then married for a second time, then married for a third time, then wrote a song cycle that no one performs. And that's the movie. There was nothing notable about her life. And nothing notable about this movie. Even Mahler's transcendent music doesn't get out of this mess in tact. The writing is VERY bad, and then it's just downhill from there. The scenes are constructed in the most un-imaginary way conceivable and the direction is flat, flat, flat. Bruce Beresford doesn't seem to know, or understand, or isn't interested in, anything about the films content. The actors are lost. There is an attempt to color the tone of the movie with dark lighting to convey something atmospheric, but with nothing in the soul of this film to parallel it it just comes off as muddy. Don't bother especially if you are a Mahler fan, or a movie fan.
Review of Bride of the Wind
