Hardly Classical

By J.C.

MAHLER

Directed and Written by KEN RUSSELL

By this time. Ken Russell should have got sick of being told he has gone too far. But on he goes, each new movie an exercise in further excess. Mahler --which appeared in England two years ago but is only now being released in the U.S.--is a discombobulated. flatulent film that bears only a glancing resemblance to the life of the post-Romantic composer.

Russell made his initial reputation as a director with a series of subdued, en terprising biographical films for the BBC. Song of Summer, a life of Frederick Delius, is still one of the best and most subtle things he has done. With 1970's feature The Music Lovers, a parboiled melodrama about Tchaikovsky, it became clear that Russell was not interested in the fine details of fact. He is not much interested in narrative structure either, or intellectual or emotional consistency. What interests Russell most is turmoil, and where there are not sufficient amounts available in his subject's life, he will supply his own. So in Mahler the composer (Robert Powell) imagines himself in the midst of a pop fantasy involving Cosima Wagner, Nazis, Crosses, Jewish stars and a crimson seesaw; this is Russell's representation of Mahler's conversion from Judaism to Catholicism. The scene--like much of the movie--means to be shocking but succeeds only in being a little naughty. Mahler is overripe, hyperbolic, hysterical, without any of the wit of last year's Tommy or the full-tilt craziness of The Devils (1971). There are stunning flashes of beauty (Mahler, as a boy, seeing a white horse in a midnight forest) and true terror (the composer dreaming himself locked in a coffin en route to his own cremation). Such scenes are signs of genuine talent. The pity is that Russell so easily disconnects from his talent and works instead out of some dim spirit of orgiastic foolishness. J.C.

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