Eisenstein In Guanajuato

By: Amos Lassen

The venerated filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein is a venerated filmmaker who is known for his talent, insight and wisdom. He is one of the few directors whose name means a movie worth seeing. Ultimately rejected by Hollywood and maliciously maligned by conservative Americans, Eisenstein traveled to Mexico in 1931 to consider a film privately funded by American pro-Communist sympathizers, headed by the American writer Upton Sinclair. Eisenstein's sensual Mexican experience appears to have a major point in his life and film career ? a significant hinge between the early successes of "Strike", "Battleship Potemkin", and "October", the films which made him a world-renowned figure, and his hesitant later career with "Alexander Nevsky", "Ivan the Terrible" and "The Boyar's Plot." Peter Greenway brings us this documentary that celebrates the sexual awakening that awaited the Eisenstein in Mexico. Greenway has attempted to capture the director at the moment "of greatest personal discovery and deepest professional frustration - which, the film takes great delight in suggesting, coincided with the loss of his virginity, at age 33, so far from his (still) homophobic homeland."

Acceding to Greenway not much as changed in movies in the 90 years since Eisenstein made "Strike". In his biography of the man he admires most in the world of cinema, he has created an unconventional and profane view that could take many years to ultimately understand and appreciate. He uses gay sex to show Eisenstein's symbolic death and resurrection. There is one scene in which Palomino Canedo pours olive oil on Eisenstein's backside and then mounts and enters him anally that is unlike any scene we have seen in mainstream cinema. Greenway is a satirist who builds his film on the themes of sex and death and it is very likely that he may be facing issues of censorship and even boycott in some places where the film might be shown. On the other hand, this film could begin a new appreciation of Eisenstein.

The film is indeed irreverent and Greenway did tremendous and meticulous research. "Eisenstein's homosexuality is seldom mentioned to those who study "Battleship Potemkin" in film school, while the Mexican chapter is but a footnote in his bio, making whatever sexual adventure he experienced there a speculative codicil to said footnote."
In 1931, Eisenstein drove to Guadajuato, Mexico after two years of unsuccessfully trying to get a production started in Hollywood. He had financial support of both Upton Sinclair (bankrolling a feature) and Vladimir Lenin (underwriting his expenses) and was immediately take with Mexico where he saw parallels to his communist fatherland. He was also impressed by the handsome academic, Canedo, an ostensibly straight scholar of comparative religion, who'd been assigned to show him around. Eisenstein comes across as a self-described caricature, pictured astride an enormous phallic cactus. He went south determined to make his epic "Que viva Mexico" (for which he shot some 250 miles of footage), but was soon derailed by more carnal distractions. Greenaway uses in-your-face artificiality when he works with no regard for tackiness and taste. He was a sexually repressed, irrepressible, character.

He was an outspoken theoretician on silent films and Greenaway attempts to do justice to Eisenstein and actually uses dialogue that is quoted from the man's own writings. Greenaway uses empty conversation to establish a sense of continuity thereby uniting a series of shots taken from different angles.

By and large, the entire film takes place in a fancy hotel room in Guanajuato with a glass floor lit from below. Eisenstein (Elmer Bäck), we see, is having a wonderful time in Mexico and this is shown to us through a series of anecdotes that represent what was going on in his mind. We never really see Eisenstein at work probably because this is the story of the story of Eisenstein's sexual awakening. He was a virgin when he came to Mexico and he is introduced to gay sex by Canedo (Luis Alberti). We see many beautiful images and this is quite an introduction to such an important person in the history of cinema.

Elmer Bäck's performance is mesmerizing, the cinematography is gorgeous, the sets are wonderful and the film is an overall experience that must be seen.