Museum Hours

A museum tour guide and a scholar visiting Vienna are the vehicles for director Jem Cohen to explore deeper questions about culture and art. A chance meeting between the two leads to some interesting conversations and gives us a beautifully photographed closer look at one of the world’s greatest and most historic cities. Anne (Mary Margaret O’Hara) has been called to Austria to visit a dying relative. On her own in a strange land, she warms to the kindness of Johann (Bobby Sommer), the tour guide who knows a hell of a lot more than just the histories of priceless works of art. Museum Hours may remind you of the Richard Linklater Before trilogy, although those stories are more about what draws people together, sometimes despite themselves. This is more about what we share irrespective of any of that magnetism.