✗ SKIP — Not worth it

Thoughts and Visions of a Severed Head

Name: Thoughts and Visions of a Severed Head
Genre: Documentary, Drama
Released: 1991-01-01
Duration: 26 min
Rating: 6.8

1991 · 0h 26m · Documentary, Drama

IMDb 6.8

Skip it. Unless you're a devoted art history nerd or experimental documentary junkie, this surreal meditation on a obscure Flemish painter's obsession with human suffering is too niche and deliberately fragmented to justify a night in. The 6.8 score tells you it struggles to connect even with its target audience.

Plot

The theme of death is heavily interwoven in Smolder’s surreal salute to Belgian painter Antoine Wiertz, a Hieronymus Bosch-type artist whose work centered on humans in various stages in torment, as depicted in expansive canvases with gore galore. Smolders has basically taken a standard documentary and chopped it up, using quotes from the long-dead artist, and periodic statements by a historian (Smolders) filling in a few bits of Wiertz’ life.

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