Beuys (2017) Reviews

• A muddled bore

  gholderbach2017-06-23

  Beuys is clearly a film whose success is completely reliant on the skill of the editor, and the editing was very sloppy. The filmmakers could not figure out how they wanted to approach their subject and the resulting approach is all over the place. The film starts off with a non-linear narrative driven by topic before suddenly shifting to a chronological structure. The film initially follows Beuys' development as an artist before becoming a character study half way through. While the style of the editing and the use of archive was interesting, the lack of focus made it impossible to get invested in what I was watching. This film did an especially poor job of explaining why any of his art is important. We are continuously told that Beuys wanted to "expand the meaning of art", and the film certainly acts as though Beuys was a visionary for believing this, but without properly explaining what that means or what any of his art means, there isn't a lot to keep the audience from thinking that Beuys is just a pretentious man. It's not until at least an hour into the film that an interpretation for one of his works is given, but by that point, the film had exhausted all the good will I had to offer.

• The artist as philosopher and/or provocateur

  skepticskeptical2019-04-21

  I had never heard of Beuys before seeing this film. Not sure what that implies. Anyway, despite being initially skeptical when I learned that he was injured several times while flying sorties for the Nazis, I ended up finding him to be quite an interesting character. The film does a good job of portraying the artist as philosopher. But he also seems to be a provocateur, which is how he became famous during his lifetime. Physically, his appeal may have derived in part from his resemblance to a B-movie detective character not unlike those portrayed by Humphrey Bogart. Looking at the works presented in this film, there can be no doubt that Beuys influenced later generations of performance artists.

• Potentially powerful, let down by some poor choices

  greg-goodale2018-11-13

  Joseph Beuys is a fascinating and complex artist rapidly receding into the mist of obscurity. With it's soft coherence and lack of focus this documentary will sadly do little to help. Beuys is an artist revered by past generations of artists - he's given glowing mention in the recent autobiography of Marina Abramovic for instance. And, from the little that is shown of his work in this film like his powerful performance piece 'I Like America and America Likes Me', it is easy to see why. It's sad then that little of his art gets the same kind of treatment and that a seemingly endless passage is devoted to his political life, which we are invited to view as a failure despite because the party of which he was one of the co-founders did not ultimately select him to stand for election. How can this be viewed as a failure in a country which has probably the most powerful green lobby anywhere in the world? The way his war myth is treated is deeply unsatisfying and leaves so many questions. Ultimately I regret that the makers of this documentary missed the opportunity to focus on Beuys the artist the way so many contemporary documentaries (Burden, Gerhardt Richter Painting, Ai WeiWei: Never Sorry) are.