‘What interests me is the transformation, not the monument. I don’t construct ruins, but I feel ruins are moments when things show themselves. A ruin is not a catastrophe. It is the moment when things can start again.’ Anselm Kiefer

Wim Wenders’ film Anselm begins with the light of dawn, and a sequence of sculptures from Anselm Kiefer’s Die Frauen der Antike / Women of Antiquity series. The first, is a flowing, tethered white dress being slowly reclaimed by nature’s elements, the camera pans through trees, accompanied by an operatic female voice in German, then a duet of sculptural solidarity. The slow, sweeping camera movement allows space for contemplation and establishes an attitude of reverence. Emerging from many whispered voices is a declaration ‘we may be nameless forgotten ones- but we don’t forget a thing.’ This series of white dresses, with symbolic objects where female figurative heads should be, are immediately arresting and poignant. Pierced with shards of glass, crowned with razor wire, towers, a ‘Melancholia’ cube and lead books, they mine a deep seam of history, mythology, and association. They have a tense, poised elegance, of purity and violent unrest, not haunted as female victims but each a haunting, ethereal, and enduring presence. Time wraps itself cyclically around these forms. We feel we are witnessing an ending and a beginning simultaneously. The style- not entirely artist film and not entirely linear fact-based documentary may frustrate some viewers, but seeing Kiefer’s work to scale on film is such a joy, it eclipses all else. This is a film about the artist, experienced primarily through his work.

Often in Anselm there are moments of retrieval and reconstruction- in photographs, fragments of vintage film, snippets of poetry by Paul Celan and Ingeborg Bachmann, in German song and forest imagery, potent touchstones in Kiefer’s long career that inform readings of his art. The film is textural in the same way memory can be, and this movement of burgeoning awareness, which comes from inside the artist’s work, is what makes the film so immersive. I saw it in 2D, so can’t comment on the 3D experience, though I can imagine based on Wenders’ previous work that in 3D, appreciation of Kiefer’s immense, tactile art would be heightened in the cinema. Wenders’ 2011 film Pina utilised 3D magnificently in a riveting portrait of Pina Bausch that placed audiences at the centre of her visceral choreography. Wenders captured the life force and very soul of Bausch’s work. It’s a case of technical depth of field being used to explore the collective subconscious, a quality shared by Wener Herzog’s Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2010) where 3D added to the holistic experience of ancient cave paintings- not just as entertainment but a way of being in the world. When a filmmaker can integrate the vision and intent of their subject as part of their process, that’s when the magic happens! Is this film magic? Perhaps not quite in the way Pina was, but Kiefer’s vision on film is utterly compelling throughout.

Anselm Kiefer’s palette, diagrammatically labelled, places malen (to paint) eternally hovering between Himmel and erde (heaven and earth). His work is fiercely grounded and aspirational/ spiritual, qualities that Wenders honours in his approach, taking in the magnitude and concentrated detail of Kiefer’s art. There is a shared understanding of cultural roots by director and artist as part of the same generation, and a certain playfulness too, such an essential element in the studio, that permeate the film. When familial photographs are introduced, the camera movement is like a magic lantern slide show, framed by Reiniger-like forest silhouettes and punctuated by a hung figure full stop. There’s a visual language of discovery, that chimes with the child-self wandering through the film, a counterfoil to feelings of loss and exile, the aging artist cycling through decades of work and material. It is a warehouse of human experience of incalculable value, especially now. ‘You can’t just paint a landscape when tanks have driven through it,’ says Kiefer. Conscience becoming consciousness is ever present in his work.

Anselm is a poetic and deeply moving portrait of an artist, who perhaps more than any other, has grappled with the unthinkable – in 1939 Germany, or in the face of any regime in the present or future, what would you do? Kiefer is brave enough to admit that the answer is steeped in uncertainty. Born in Germany in 1945, into a society in collective denial of the past, Kiefer’s art taps deep into the human psyche. In his own words ‘I held a mirror up to everyone’s face,’ confronting the all-pervasive silence with works like his Occupations series (1968-69). Drawing on the German Romantic tradition and its systematic abuse at the hands of the Nazis, Kiefer is self-cast as a Friedrich-like lone figure in his father’s uniform. The elation of coming face to face with Nature is defiled by a banned salute, confronting human nature and societal taboos instead, in an act of protest.  Kiefer’s monumental art which incorporates painting, sculpture and installation emerges resiliently from the rubble. He is insistent about ‘not forgetting’- the ‘open wound’ of history, our essential connection with ancient mythologies to understand, and the ‘unbearable lightness’ of what we are in the universe. He’s an artist who has absorbed the whole of human history and transcended himself in the process, as all great artists do. Seeing the expression on his face as he works undoes the macho cigar smoking. He is vulnerable, and to make connections across generations he truly needs to be, his art demands no less.

One of the great pleasures of this film is seeing Kiefer’s immense work, so exquisitely tactile in its encrusted, alchemical layers, beautifully captured on film by cinematographer Franz Lustig. From drone footage of the Kiefer’s incredible 200-acre studio complex in Barjac, Southern France, to the artist in closeup, burning pathways through a colossal painting with a blowtorch, using incineration to create a horizon. The collection of material, thought and action in his studio, the subterranean chambers of mind and epic architectural constructions are breathtaking. Experienced in the flesh, it is impossible to be in the presence of Kiefer’s work and not be moved by the sheer scale of consciousness and transformation, ironically born out of civilization in collapse. He admits that ‘nothing is part of being.’ I often feel intense loss when looking at his work, but I also feel hope in the making and Wenders captures this quality in the presence of Anselm’s younger self, played by Anton Wenders, the child that accompanies the adult artist throughout. The belief ‘that childhood is an empty space, like the beginning of the world’ carries hope within it. The same is true of Kiefer’s extraordinary work.

Anselm is screening in 2D and 3D in cinemas and streaming on Curzon Home Cinema in the UK.