Peereddi I was totally surprised at how great this film.You could feel your paranoia rise as the film went on and as you gradually learned the details of the real situation.

Helllins It is both painfully honest and laugh-out-loud funny at the same time.

Myron Clemons A film of deceptively outspoken contemporary relevance, this is cinema at its most alert, alarming and alive.

Scarlet The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

lasttimeisaw As the title indicates, this is a biopic inspired by the Mexican days of Soviet Union cinema vanguard Sergei Eisenstein (1898-1948), after his sortie into Hollywood proved to be futile, in 1930, he was assigned to make the ambitious but ultimately problematic project QUE VIVA MEXICO in Mexico (the whole ordeal is worthy of its own screen re-enactment), which Eisenstein would later relinquishes, a relatively intact version would only be released posthumously in 1979. No one would expect Peter Greenaway's treatment to be strictly reverent, although now in his seventies, Greenaway has no hesitation of venturing into the prurient facet of Eisenstein's idiosyncrasy and abandon, preponderantly, the film is a two-hander between Sergei (Bäck) and his Mexican guide Palomino Cañedo (Alberti), to whom Sergei claims to lose his virginity. Sergei's homosexual initiation is explicitly explored in the palatial hotel room he stays, on that vast bed, the sex temple he shares with Palomino, and coins the first ten days in Guanajuato as "Ten Days that shook Eisenstein", a wordplay to his revolutionary pièce-de-résistence OCTOBER: TEN DAYS THAT SHOOK THE WORLD (1928). Greenaway delights in magnifying Eisenstein's blunt self-reflection and directorial frustration (although it is mostly an interior piece that largely overlooks the filmmaker's onerous field work, excluding a visit to the Mummies of Guanajuato and the institution of the Day of the Dead celebration) through his larger-than-life approach which constitutes operatic ways of utterance, info-dumping sleight-of-hand where real-life footage is rapidly juxtaposed to counterpoint the references in a triptych split-screen, and majestic, but noticeably digitally airbrushed and light-inflected scenography, being put into great use in the flourishes of 360 degree twirling shots and seamlessly edited faux-long shots, etc., all is impressive on a grandiose scale, but also appreciably betrays an overreaching effort to reassure us that he is still at the top of his game.Under the spotlight is Finnish actor Elmer Bäck's madcap impersonation of a ludic, unprepossessing Eisenstein, sporting a fuzzy, bouffant hairdo à la Einstein, and gives his all to Greenaway's undue caprices, which on the whole leaves the impression that Eisenstein is more hysterical than sympathetic, a clownish figure whose brilliance is very much elusive to moderately stunned audience, a typical case of miscast should be noted. Luis Alberti, by comparison, comes off less scathed owing to his more natural and unaffected "stud" role in the play. By and large, Greenaway's self-reflexive, symphonically flamboyant opus can be construed as a nonconformist filmmaker's knowing salute to a free-spirited genius who constantly clashes with his times and whose legacy should be incessantly exhumed to meet new light and fresh air, and knock dead any number of spectators.

zacknabo Elmer Back plays Eisenstein (where did they find this guy?). Back's performance is magnetic and mesmerizing, one of my favorites of the year. Back brings a wonderful sense of humor to the film and is an outstanding physical actor/comedian. His slight facial gestures and mannerisms bring a full depth of dimension to his portrayal of Sergei Eisenstein. His frenetic, manic energy with a resting heart rate of about 150 beats per minute is simply a wonder to watch and in perfect step with the film's visual explosiveness. Biopics (by the way this is a VERY loose biopic) are exceptionally easy to make bad, pretty easy to make mediocre, hard as s**t to make good and nearly impossible to make unique. So it comes as no surprise that it a truly formula shattering biopic covering one of the most wildly innovative, complex and enigmatic geniuses in the history of cinema (or in the world).It's the thirties and Soviet film pioneer and Stalinists propagandists Sergei Eisenstein has been shunned by Hollywood for his obvious Red connections and on taking advice by friends such as Charlie Chaplin has gone to Mexico to make his next great "Masterpiece!" Which is more than a struggle, for as the audience slowly finds out, largely in manic diatribes spouted by Eisenstein himself, the legendary auteur is in a highly confused and vulnerable state in his life: financially, politically, sexually, philosophically and artistically. The set pieces in Eisenstein explode in glorious color imposed in fine tuned geometric framing; the depth of staging creates a world within a world, making the sets in Guanajuato a place that existed yet never quite existed. Greenaway in homage to Eisenstein uses many of his techniques montage editing, curt shots, quick scenes that suddenly cut in about three seconds just as Eisenstein, Aleksandr Dovzhenko, Dziga Vertov or other similar montage formalists such as Abel Gance would have. The difference in Greenaway's adoption and mixing of his own techniques with those classic reverence styles is that he maintains continuity in style yet never grows too predictable with his camera and never falls into the deathtrap that is nauseating Tarantino-esque pastiche. Greenaway's use of wide-angle lenses and wonderful tracking dolly shots (reminiscent of Max Ophuls) to follow the frenzied, perpetually moving Eisenstein to-and-fro is amazing and never misses a beat. At certain points Greenaway splits the screen using classic clips of Eisenstein's films and photographs of people that are being referenced as Eisenstein speaks, putting on full display the classic stylings of classic art-cinema, all the while maintaining an air of freshness.Back's performance can become much too some, but in all of Eisenstein's rambling monologues one becomes aware of this man's inner feelings, his emotions that swing from one pole to the next, his true feelings about the Soviet Bear, his fears, his eccentricities, his hang-ups, his diva-bility, as well as his true genius. While the story may seem to remain a bit too vague for some, the devil is in the details. Greenaway is not the man that is going to do a traditional deep-sea delving into the life a character. In Eisenstein Greenaway methodically externalizes the director's philosophies on life and art (and the machinations behind art). We learn about Eisenstein through simple, seemingly unimportant instances (in terms of the man's work), like how he falls for his Mexican chaperone Palomino (Luis Alberti), who eventually anally deflowers Eisenstein in a very funny, touching, matter of fact scene that I assume made many audience members cringe uncomfortably. There are also a few striking scenes with skeletons and a skull; Eisenstein becoming truly enamored with all of this imagery that's semiotics recall the mystery and exotic pageantry of "The Day of the Dead." The Day of the Dead…Eisenstein was very much interested in how the mind processed associations and I couldn't help but to think of the hopeless drunk Albert Finney played in John Huston's Mexico-set film Under the Volcano, where both Eisenstein and Finney's characters mirror each other in a particular way. Both are confused, wasting their talents, lost, lost in an existential sense and lost in a foreign place. Eisenstein in Guanajuato is crucially underrated. For fans of Eisenstein it is a must see and is still enjoyable for fans of film even if unaware of the great Sergei Eisenstein and early cinematic forms, though will certainly miss a lot.

dromasca Peter Greenaway's career is beyond any ambitions of commercial success - his most successful (audience-wise) movies were made in the 80s. Even then the combination of colors and music, architecture (he is an architect by formation) and composition, his obsessions for sex and death and his bluntness in approaching them were much out of the beaten track. For the last two decades his projects became more and more exploratory, with the moving images being only one of the tools in combinations of multi-disciplinary explorations and experiments that brought together almost every artistic discipline that was invented. Eisenstein in Guanajuato can be seen almost as a return to the more conventional tools of film making. It has a story, and it has a hero and it has a theme, one of these themes film makers love to bring to screen, maybe the ultimate film theme - film making! If you listen to what Peter Greenaway has to tell about his film (and he speaks a lot as he promotes the film in the international festival tour) Eisentein in Guanajuato is before all a homage to one of the greatest directors in the history of cinema who was Sergei Eisenstein. It also is a social and political commentary, as it deals with what was probably the most exuberant, liberal and care-free period in the life of the screen director of the Soviet Revolution, and also with the sexual orientation of Eisenstein which was kind of a well known secret in his biography, tolerated by the Soviet authorities but maybe also a tool of blackmail by the KGB. The period spent by Eisenstein in Mexico while shooting material never gathered and edited for a film about the country and its revolutions may have been the happiest time in the life of the director already famous for Potemkin and October. It allowed him not only a unique encounter with a culture that was so different from some aspects yet so close from other compared with the Russian culture he knew from home, but also an encounter with himself, with his own demons, his self-denied homosexuality, his tendency to the luxury and the decadence of the bourgeois life, so different from the austerity he left in the Soviet Russia and to which he was condemned to return.There is almost nothing in this film about Eisenstein's film making. At no point does he shout 'Camera!' or 'Action!' - at some moment he even refuses to do so. Peter Greenaway does not try to expose any secrets of the film making art of Eisenstein, but rather deals with the surrounding context that made his films possible. Finnish actor Elmer Bäck brings on screen an Eisenstein who hides his doubts behind exuberance, and his fears behinds carelessness, who is sure of his artistic genius but unaware about his personal charisma. Mexican actor Luis Alberti builds a fine counterpoint to Eisenstein's character and a credible gay love interest. The camera work does not try to replicate anything that Eisenstein has done on screen, but rather quotes and incorporates fragments of Eisentein's movies with the visual commentaries of Greenaway. I read some critical opinions about viewers 'getting tired' by the too intense camera work - I do not agree with them. When what you see on screen is expressive and interesting you cannot get tired, as one does not get tired of seeing more masterpieces in an art museum, or of listening to fine opera or classical music. Sets are as exuberant and as complex as an architect mind like Greenaway's can conceive. Overall Eisenstein in Guanajuato was for me a very satisfying and surprisingly entertaining experience.

Eduard Vito When I was waiting for the movie to start, I was wondering why so many gay couples had come in to see it. However this was all explained as soon as the movie started.This film indeed is not about Eisenstein making a film (we see very little to nothing of that), or about his time in Mexico: except for some beautiful shots of nature and some dead masks and philosophical bladibla which has been taken totally out of context and are never truly deepened, there is little to no true interaction with Mexican culture. All conversations except for a very small amount are in English.No, this movie is all about the male body and, to put it frank, gay anal sex. Yes, indeed the butt-loving Eisenstein receives from his Mexican guide Cañedo is probably his most profound encounter with the Mexicans, and for the rest of the movie the two characters do little else than run around naked with their willies flopping up and down. Other characters do appear in the movie but get no real chance at any story or development. The prime example of this are the American brother and sister who barge into Eisenstein's hotel room towards to end of the movie. This is actually the moment that the viewer discovers that Eisenstein has already been in Mexico for 8 months shooting a movie with American funding, something quite essential but completely discarded during the first part of the picture.The most annoying part of the film was certainly the vertiginous camera work. In the scene in the hotel room just described, the camera spins for about 5 minutes around the bed with a half-naked Eisenstein in it. I had to actually close my eyes as I felt the whole scene was making me sick. The vomiting and diarrhea scenes at the start of the movie had already done the same thing.In other words, for those profoundly into male nudity and gay cinema, I would recommend to go and see this film; otherwise, you'll probably have some other place you'd rather be.