Mahler (1974)

As biopics go, this has to be the least structured and most creatively ambiguous I think I’ve ever seen. It sort of follows a chronology of the life of Gustav Mahler (Robert Powell) using a train journey with his wife Alma (Georgina Hale) and a wide selection of his music as a conduit for just how we got here. It’s safe to say that the marriage isn’t exactly happy. She resents the time he spends composing and conducting and even though they have a very comfortable life with their children, she yearns for something more. He, meantime, is so subsumed in his art that he doesn’t notice, or realise, or maybe even care that his wife might leave him for a dashing soldier who rather smugly confronts an obviously now poorly Mahler in their compartment. Ken Russell doesn’t, however, just give us a join the dots version of their temperamentally charged lives. We dart about using current scenarios, other passengers on the train, even the porters to paint a picture of their opulent discomfort whilst regaling us with numerous flashbacks illustrating happier times, family times and healthier ones too. It’s as if someone took a jigsaw of this man’s life and threw the pieces into the air. We have to try to put it back together again, except we only have bits of the guide picture from which to work and so coupled with his rousing music we are presented with much more of a puzzle than you’d expect from the title. In many ways, it could easily be an Ingmar Bergman film - the style of costumes, photography and brilliant light all have a certain sterility to them that marries the classic with the impersonal and though chemistry wouldn’t be the right word, there is certainly something between the on-form Powell and Hale. There is one scene in this with Mahler in a glass-topped coffin that is positively and claustrophobically surreal, and that rather sums up this clever take on an history of a enigmatic man obsessed. Big screen audio does the orchestrations extra justice, but even if you’re not a great fan of his works, this is quirky film-making at it’s best.