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Just so...so bad

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Frequently referred to as the most straightforward of Ken Russell's biopics of great composers, MAHLER is nevertheless full of shocking images, awful characters and plenty of grotesque theatrics. In other words, it's never boring. And while it may be tame compared to the prior Tchaikovsky biography THE MUSIC LOVERS and the later LISZTOMAINIA, Russell pulls few punches with this expose of the great Austrian composer. As a train carries Mahler and his neglected wife Alma home, Russell's film unfolds with various vignettes of their life together as well as some hideous recollections from Mahler's childhood. Robert Powell has the title role and while he's excellent, he's not really called on to carry the film himself. As Alma, Georgina Hale is astounding and every inch Powell's match. They make up a great love/hate (mostly hate) relationship. Events from Mahler's life are told with all of Russell's usual debauchery, including a very freaky (and highly anachronistic) run-in with Richard Wagner's loony wife Cosima. It's a real highlight in a film full of bizarre scenes. Look VERY fast for an Oliver Reed cameo.

Interesting movie, generally dealing with accurate historical facts, but in a dreamy, psychological manner. However, it looks a bit rushed and almost lacking the grandeur, the fury and the sarcasm which were also characteristic to Mahler the man, the composer and the conductor. The Monty Python scene with Cosima Wagner as a Nazi Domina is a blasphemy, totally out of the blue, ridiculous and not based on anything real. Of course she was a fierce anti-Semite, but did she really have so much influence? Perhaps it's a metaphor, but then it should not have been treated in circus style, as its ground themes were not light matter. One more thing: although a very good actor, Robert Powell looked in several scenes more like Harold Lloyd than like Mahler. LE: Now it striked me: Hugh Grant might be a more appropriate Mahler, at least looks-wise.

Yes, you had to have developed an appetite for Ken Russell's visions. Mahler works beautifully for me. I happen to like Mahler's music and historically, Russell, captures the juice of this man's genius.Russell moves behind the music, into the skin of Mahler, his wife, Alma, and the tragic circumstances that surround them.Mahler would have smiled when experiencing Russell's image of him. Thomas Mann's book, Death in Venice, is about Mahler, and Russell includes the railroad station scene, with the young boy and the business man, courting a bit, and then the camera, goes to Mahler, who understands whats going on here, and smiles, in amusement. Clever touch for Russell, but is most likely lost on the general audience. Not to say Mahler liked little boys, but his sexual orientation was ambiguous, at best.Alma was like that, and the officer, whom she was having an affair, was most likely that way? Mahler went to see Freud over this affair in reality. Russell always takes us inside the psychological drama and visualizes, the inner Hell, Mahler feared regarding his wife and his coming death.Alma had affairs after Mahler's death, and was a star f...ER, and had marriages and affairs with Europe's most brilliant geniuses, for real. She loved bright men, but loved herself, the most, I think? Later Erich Wolfgang Korngold, wrote a violin concerto for her, in Hollywood.The film's tracking of the creative process regarding the music, is most likely right on, though the little composing hut, was not on the lake shore, but on a hill top, overlooking the lake.Over all the film is historically correct, and emotionally, shows it as it most likely was for them as a famous couple. Alma did harbor jealousy, and stopped composing her music. Of late a CD has been released of her music and her music is acceptable, but pales compared to her husband's giant compositions.I would have liked for Russell to include Richard Strauss's music, and their personal friendship. Both composers often talked about their troubles with their music and their wives. Strauss and Mahler are often similar in their musical genius, and understood each other's vision musically. It would have been nice to have the two together more in this film's history.You have to have a taste for Mahler and Russell, to really get the humor and the brilliance that lies just beneath of surface. At least, Mahler, did not turn out to be another TOMMY...ha Bravo to Ken Russell and I am so glad he came along in my life time. Cast was perfect as well.

Ken Russell made several films for the BBC on artists and musicians like Fredrick Delius, the composer, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, the painter and poet, and one of the founders of the Pre Raphaelite movement. The Rossetti film features the late Oliver Reed in an engrossing performance. This Mahler film is quite good. I feared watching it because I thought Ken Russell would make a circus of Mahler's tempestuous life, but it's a fairly controlled foray, except for the aforementioned sequence with Wagner's widow, BUT she was well acquainted with Hitler, and she never met a Nazi she didn't like, so the scene with her was founded on fact. Robert Powell, and the lovely Georgina Hale, give beautiful performances. I looked in their credits and see THEY ARE BARELY WORKING TODAY. Maybe their own choice or a preference of stage work. I can't believe they would pass up today's movie money. They have not appeared as far as I can see in any major movie project for years. I don't get it. Russell, if he worked with the editor fitting the music to the film, shows a real feeling for the music. Even today Mahler's music is a specially acquired taste, and if much of it sounds bizzaire today, think what it sounded like to listners in 1906. A special kudo must go to David Collings as the insane composer Hugo Wolf. An acting gem. Also no current acting credits. David where are you? We need guys like you, Robert Powell, and Georgina Hale.