Roni Horn, “Becoming a Landscape,” detail, twenty chromogenic prints, 1999–2001 / © Roni Horn
Whitney Museum of American Art
945 Madison Ave. at 75th St.
Wednesday – Sunday 11:00 am – 6:00 pm
Admission: $18 (Pay-what-you-wish Fridays 6:00 – 9:00)
212-570-3600
www.whitney.org
This might be the last weekend to catch “Georgia O’Keeffe: Abstraction,” an examination of the painter’s development from dark abstract works to her more familiar, repetitive flowery canvases that often feature a palette tailor-made for warm-weather living rooms (however, be sure not to miss the room of intimate photographs of O’Keeffe taken by her longtime lover, Alfred Stieglitz), but there’s a little more time to see the far more interesting and rewarding “Roni Horn AKA Roni Horn,” which runs through January 24. In this wide-ranging midcareer retrospective, Horn searches for the nature of identity in photography, sculpture, drawing, and installation, incorporating images of landscape and language while playing with perception and duality. Horn forces the viewer to question their own place in an ever-changing world in such works as “You are the weather,” comprising one hundred photos of the same woman in Iceland gazing into the camera, her mood shifting based on how hot or cold she is; “Becoming a Landscape,” in which Horn places side by side pairs of photographs taken an instant apart, with only the barest hint of difference evident; “This Is me, This is you,” two large grids of multiple pictures taken of her niece over a few years, consisting of pairs of shots that seem like duplicates but are not; and “Dead Owl,” two pictures of the title subject that are indeed the same. Spread over two floors, “Roni Horn AKA Roni Horn” offers a unique and fascinating perspective on both art and reality.
Alice Guy Blaché, A HOUSE DIVIDED, 1913 (courtesy of the Library of Congress MBRS Division / photograph by George Willeman)
Also continuing through January 24 is “Alice Guy Blaché: Cinema Pioneer,” screenings of the little-seen films of the first woman director and studio owner, a series of shorts and longer works that are worth sitting down and spending time with in the Kaufman Astoria Studios Film & Video & Video Galleries, while “Omer Fast: Nostalgia,” in the first-floor Anne & Joel Ehrenkranz Gallery through February 14, displays Fast’s three-part film that investigates fact vs. fiction, reality vs. invention. (Fast fans can also check out his new exhibit at Postmasters in Chelsea, which includes the videos TAKE A DEEP BREATH and DE GROTE BOODSCHAP.)
Winner of numerous awards at film festivals all over the world, Adam Elliot’s stop-motion animated MARY AND MAX is the touching, unforgettable tale of two loners who become pen pals, sharing the details of their hopes and dreams over decades. Mary (voiced by Bethany Whitmore as a young girl and Toni Collette when she gets older) is an oddball child living in a small town in Australia. Seeking a friend, she sends a letter to a random person she finds in a phone book. Max (Philip Seymour Hoffman) is a childlike middle-aged man suffering from Asperger’s Disorder in New York City. Through the years, their long-distance relationship goes through emotional ups and downs, building to a surprising ending that still has us scratching our heads. Elliot, who won an Oscar for his short film HARVIE KRUMPET in 2003, wrote, directed, and designed the sets and characters for MARY AND MAX, inspired by the photography of Diane Arbus. He brings Mary and Max to life in charming ways, adding little details and flourishes that will endear you to them even though they both are very, very strange. The film, wonderfully narrated by Barry “Dame Edna” Humphries, required more than 130,000 individual frames and 212 puppets and took 57 weeks to shoot; the result is simply charming. MARY AND MAX is being shown this weekend at Lincoln Center as part of the New York Jewish Film Festival; executive producer Paul Hardart will be in attendance at the January 23 screening. (The film is also part of the 
Akira Kurosawa’s powerful psychological drama begins with a jazzy score over shots of a bustling Japanese city, people anxiously hurrying through as a Theremin joins the fray. But this is no Hollywood film noir or low-budget frightfest; Kurosawa’s daring film is about the end of old Japanese society as the threat of nuclear destruction hovers over everyone. A completely unrecognizable Toshiro Mifune stars as Nakajima, an iron foundry owner who wants to move his large family — including his two mistresses — to Brazil, which he believes to be the only safe place on the planet where he can survive the H bomb. His immediate family, concerned more about the old man’s money than anything else, takes him to court to have him declared incompetent; there he meets a dentist (the always excellent Takashi Shimura) who also mediates such problems — and fears that Nakajima might be the sanest one of all.
Japanese novelist Kôbô Abe and director Hiroshi Teshigahara collaborated on five films together, including the marvelously existential WOMAN OF THE DUNES in 1964 and THE FACE OF ANOTHER two years later. In THE FACE OF ANOTHER, Tatsuya Nakadai (THE HUMAN CONDITION, KILL!) stars as Okuyama, a man whose face has virtually disintegrated in a laboratory accident. He spends the first part of the film with his head wrapped in bandages, a la the Invisible Man, as he talks about identity, self-worth, and monsters with his wife (Machiko Kyo), who seems to be growing more and more disinterested in him. Then Okuyama visits a psychiatrist (Mikijirô Hira) who is able to create a new face for him, one that would allow him to go out in public and just become part of the madding crowd again. But his doctor begins to wonder, as does Okuyama, whether the mask has actually taken control of his life, making him as helpless as he was before.
