Mahler

From its stunning opening sequence, featuring Georgina Hale (Mahler's wife Anna) isolated in full mummy wrap and writhing with erotic yearning to the lush strains of her husband's music, Mahler distinguishes itself as the most poetic and archetypal of Russell's great-composer works. A cinematic response to Luchino Visconti's 1971 adaptation of Death in Venice, Mahler stars Robert Powell as the great Jewish romantic composer. Whilst the film is the least ostentatious of Russell's movies about music, it is hardly conventional - a mix of lyrical tableaux and comic fantasy that adds up to a stirring, dreamlike experience.