Museum Hours

David Lean would have used this material to make a three and a half hour technicolour epic in the style of Dr Zhivago. That would have been a legitimate artistic choice given the vaulting ambition of the subject matter juxtaposing the romantic relationship of Zula and Wiktor and the entire history of Europe in the mid 20th century.  In contrast,  Pawel Pawlikowski  covers the ground in a brisk and economical 88 minutes of crisp black and white but by the time the iconic Glenn Gould interpretation of the main theme of Bach's Goldberg Variations  starts playing at around 85 minutes the tears will rise unbidden. This is a film which brilliantly engages with history and period and how we deal with the inheritance from the past. The point of departure is Polish folk song and dance as a way of showing national resilience and pride after the horrors of the Second World War but also as the expression of a newly minted state which has to develop its own way of recognising the i