Bride of the Wind (2001)

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

Bride of the Wind could have been great, it was an interesting subject and I love music-biographical dramas when they're good. Bride of the Wind was a big disappointment. Sure, it is beautifully shot and looks gorgeous from a colour and production value perspective. The music, mostly from Mahler, is every bit as wonderful, and Jonathan Pryce and particularly Vincent Perez are very good. Unfortunately Sarah Wynter's Alma is devoid of any sensuality, nuances or life, it's a complete blank of a performance that only succeeds in making Alma shallow and thoroughly unlikeable. Simon Verhoeven suffers from being completely under-utilised and underwritten so he can't do anything with his character, who is just there with no depth and nothing to make him distinguishable. But that is the case with all the characters actually, excepting perhaps Gustav Mahler, they are written with no substance- you can safely say that they are literally sketched over- and at no point do you engage with them. The script is completely lifeless and full to the brim with stilted dialogue, while the story is not just dull but too often steps through its content so after the film ended things happen but with hardly anything explaining them. There are also some ridiculously misconceived plot-strands, the one with Alma and Oskar being the main culprit. All in all, looks beautiful with two good performances and wonderful music, but shallow and dull that makes you hate Alma intensely. 4/10 Bethany Cox

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.

I lived in Vienna for four years so I was really excited to see this movie. My attention was grabbed by the DVDs cover art which is a repackaging of The Kiss by Gustav Klimt. The late 1800s until World War II was a very unique time in the fields of art, psychology, music, architecture/design and literature that is very rarely touched upon nowadays. So I had high hopes. But I was disappointed in this movie and I felt it could have been in a much more interesting way. The actors were OK I guess. I don't think they had much in the dialogue department to work with. The points that would have made this much more interesting...the art, music and literary aspects...were just touched upon. But that said, it was billed as a story about one woman's life during this period and how she was a muse to some of the now famous men of the era. Actually I came away being much less sympathetic to this woman than I was before I saw the film. She seemed less of a muse than a woman who used famous men for her own ends. I find it unusual that out of all of Vienna, she managed only to make well-known men her lovers. Men such as Gustav Klimt, Oskar Kolkoschka, Water Gropius, Gustav Mahler and on and on. It really did no favors to this woman's reputation and I viewed her as kind of a user and a whiner. Yes she did not have a lot of freedom but it was the very early 1900s, neither did any other woman. She seemed to have the daring to jump from man to man in the days when this was simply not done in polite society. Yet she did not seem to have the courage to try to make it on her own in the field of music. If she was adventurous enough to throw caution to the wind and live such a bohemian lifestyle, I do not know why she would then have cause to complain about being stifled when she knew full well what marriage in that time entailed. How about having the courage to life your own life and pursue your own dreams in the field of music. Rather than depending on some man to fulfill your dreams then complaining when they are not. So I just found the storyline became very uninteresting very quickly and the other points such as the arts & culture of the time would have added much more interest to the film. But were just glossed over in the end.

I watched this bit of eye candy in the hope that the story of Alma Schindler Mahler Gropius Werfel would unfold and the world could see a portrait of a daring, talented woman who was indeed liberated in nearly every sense of the word. Mahler is one of one of my favorite composers and I became fascinated with Alma Schindler, believe it or not, from a parody sung by Tom Lehrer. However, since that time, many, many years ago, I've managed to read several excellent biographies of Mahler as well as Alma Schindler's autobiography, which leads me to comment on this film. Sadly, this film disappoints. It is a beautiful piece of work, with darkness wrought from bright colors, ala Bergman's Cries and Whispers, and with wonderful costumes. But, as the other reviews herein note, the script is weak and Sarah Wynter's performance is spotty. Indeed, the two male stars, Jonathon Pryce as Mahler and Vincent Perez as the artist, Oskar Kokoschka outshine Wynter's tentative characterization of Alma. Perez is especially bright, exuding passion and artistic madness, as biographer's have depicted the painter, a pioneer in early 20th Century expressionism. Peter Verhoeven as Gropius and Gregor Seberg as Werfel seem to get ground up and we're left wondering why they were written into the script...in spite of the fact, each played a significant role in the life of Alma Schindler Mahler Gropius Werfel. Too bad, they are underutilized. And, to continue slamming the script, they are badly depicted. Gropius, the great architectural innovator of the Bauhaus was hardly the foppish Mama's boy shown in the film. And, the passionate, multi-talented Franz Werfel, author of Song of Berndadette and Forty Days at Musa Dagh, was hardly the clowning caricature presented in the film. Even the solid performance of Welsh veteran Jonathon Pryce is led astray. The driven, passionate and often neurotic Mahler, compulsively washing his hands 12 times a day was not the staid, stoic older man shown in this film. So, alas, the great subject matter has been neglected. What results is not-a-bad movie about a fascinating woman that with a bit more research, better script, and a different leading lady could have been excellent, really excellent film.