The venerated filmmaker Eisenstein is comparable in talent, insight and wisdom, with the likes of Shakespeare or Beethoven; there are few - if any - directors who can be elevated to such heights. On the back of his revolutionary film Battleship Potemkin, he was celebrated around the world, and invited to the US. Ultimately rejected by Hollywood and maliciously maligned by conservative Americans, Eisenstein traveled to Mexico in 1931 to consider a film privately funded by American pro-Communist sympathizers, headed by the American writer Upton Sinclair. Eisenstein''s sensual Mexican experience appears to have been pivotal in his life and film career - a significant hinge between the early successes of Strike, Battleship Potemkin, and October, which made him a world-renowned figure, and his hesitant later career with Alexander Nevsky, Ivan the Terrible and The Boyar''s Plot.

Eisenstein in Guanajuato is a 2015 biographical romantic comedy-drama film written and directed by Peter Greenaway. Starring Elmer Bäck as Soviet film director Sergei Eisenstein, alongside Stelio Savante, Lisa Owen, Maya Zapata, Luis Alberti, Jakob Öhrman, Rasmus Slätis, and Rhino Ranta, the film is an international co-production between companies in the Netherlands, Mexico, Belgium, Finland, and France.

Eisenstein in Guanajuato premiered at the 65th Berlin International Film Festival in the main competition section on 11 February 2015. The film was voted to the bottom place by the Screen International‘s critics’ jury and subsequently ignored by the official jury.

The film opened theatrically in the Netherlands on 18 June, 8 July in France, 4 September in Finland, and 22 January 2016 in Mexico. It was granted a very limited theatrical release in the United States on 5 February 2016.

Critical reception
The film received mixed reviews from critics. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a 55% score based on 38 reviews, with an average rating of 6/10. The site''s consensus states: "Eisenstein in Guanajuato is certainly bold, but its provocations aren''t always enough to overcome a lack of depth and clear narrative purpose." Metacritic reports a 60 out of 100 rating based on 16 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".

Critic and author David Robinson praised Greenaway''s "...own post-modern pictorialism still as ingenious, flashy and painstakingly wrought in his seventies." He also criticised the film heavily for its salaciousness and many historical inaccuracies, stating that of Eisenstein''s wife Pera Atasheva and his many friends, confidants and colleagues: "None of these would recognise the Eisenstein they knew in Greenaway’s Guanajuato."

Wow! Excellent !
10/10
Author: zif ofoz from United States
5 June 2016
I read the reviews for this film by the other writers here and some are so spot on and well informed I feel a bit intimidated writing this short review. This film by Director/writer: Peter Greenaway is spellbinding, modern, surreal, and above all, as other writers expressed, captures the inner spirit of Eisenstein''s genius.

Just as Guanajuato is geographically located in the center of Mexico this story is focused on Eisenstein discovering his personal center. He wanted to be accepted by Hollywood and they rejected him. In Soviet Russia he glorified the revolution with his film "October" and everyone saw him as an artist but he had to hide the person the artist is. He was a great artist of the cinema but here in Guanajuato Eisenstein finds himself and realizes he doesn''t need the approval of his peers to be the person he is. With the companionship of his Mexican guide ''Palomino'', performed so wonderfully by Luis Alberti, Eisenstein gives into his own desires, his own needs, and is given the chance (though briefly) to be himself physically, artistically, and intellectually.

If anyone wants to see the art of Eisenstein just find one of his movies and you will be stunned by it''s grand yet simple photography and story. If you want to see an element of ''the man'' that created these remarkable films catch this movie. Here the artist brakes the shackles others have place upon him. But in the end he must return to Soviet Russia and back to judging eyes that are so symbolically shown throughout the movie by the three Mexican men in traditional dress. They represent the establishment, society, they eyes and minds that judge all who try to be who they really are.

Great cinema for the thinking person!

Eisenstein Lives!
10/10
Author: cllrdr-1 from Los Angeles, Ca.
7 July 2015
Ordinarily I can take Peter Greenaway or leave him alone -- chiefly the latter. But he really scores this time with a story that has longed to be told.

As is known Sergei Eisenstein hoped to work in Hollywood in the early thirties just as sound came in. But thanks to aright-wing campaign (plus its own lack of imagination) Paramount Pictures was scared off from making films of with of the scripts the great Russian director had written : an adaptation of Dreiser''s "An American Tragedy" and an original historical drama "Sutter''s Gold." The novelist Upton Sinclair stepped in and elected to back a film Eisenstein wanted to make about Mexico. But he knew nothing about film production and less about Eisenstein''s highly improvisatory working methods. Under-budgeted and best by problems the shoot was brought to a halt when Sinclair''s brother-in-law, Hunter Kimbrough discovered SME was having too much fun south of the border. Moreover he got a gander at the great man''s cache of frankly gay pornographic drawings. Eisenstein not only never got to edit "Que Viva Mexico" -- he never even saw the rushes. He returned to Russia where he made "Alexander Nevsky" and "Ivam the Terrible" Sinclair meanwhile had the "Que Viva Mexico" footage sliced and diced into travelogues.

This is the backdrop of what Greenaway has done which s to present Eisenstein''s Mexican sojourn as a sexual awakening. He falls madly in love (and lust) with a handsome guide. Greenaway brings the full bore of his visual imagination to telling this tale with multiple images and lighting the likes of which hasn''t been seen since Sternberg. Elmer Back is superb as SME and Luis Alberti is equally great as his love interest. Not to be missed.

at crossroads in Mexico
8/10
Author: dromasca from Herzlya, Israel
1 October 2015
Peter Greenaway''s career is beyond any ambitions of commercial success - his most successful (audience-wise) movies were made in the 80s. Even then the combination of colors and music, architecture (he is an architect by formation) and composition, his obsessions for sex and death and his bluntness in approaching them were much out of the beaten track. For the last two decades his projects became more and more exploratory, with the moving images being only one of the tools in combinations of multi-disciplinary explorations and experiments that brought together almost every artistic discipline that was invented. Eisenstein in Guanajuato can be seen almost as a return to the more conventional tools of film making. It has a story, and it has a hero and it has a theme, one of these themes film makers love to bring to screen, maybe the ultimate film theme - film making!

If you listen to what Peter Greenaway has to tell about his film (and he speaks a lot as he promotes the film in the international festival tour) Eisentein in Guanajuato is before all a homage to one of the greatest directors in the history of cinema who was Sergei Eisenstein. It also is a social and political commentary, as it deals with what was probably the most exuberant, liberal and care-free period in the life of the screen director of the Soviet Revolution, and also with the sexual orientation of Eisenstein which was kind of a well known secret in his biography, tolerated by the Soviet authorities but maybe also a tool of blackmail by the KGB. The period spent by Eisenstein in Mexico while shooting material never gathered and edited for a film about the country and its revolutions may have been the happiest time in the life of the director already famous for Potemkin and October. It allowed him not only a unique encounter with a culture that was so different from some aspects yet so close from other compared with the Russian culture he knew from home, but also an encounter with himself, with his own demons, his self-denied homosexuality, his tendency to the luxury and the decadence of the bourgeois life, so different from the austerity he left in the Soviet Russia and to which he was condemned to return.

There is almost nothing in this film about Eisenstein''s film making. At no point does he shout ''Camera!'' or ''Action!'' - at some moment he even refuses to do so. Peter Greenaway does not try to expose any secrets of the film making art of Eisenstein, but rather deals with the surrounding context that made his films possible. Finnish actor Elmer Bäck brings on screen an Eisenstein who hides his doubts behind exuberance, and his fears behinds carelessness, who is sure of his artistic genius but unaware about his personal charisma. Mexican actor Luis Alberti builds a fine counterpoint to Eisenstein''s character and a credible gay love interest. The camera work does not try to replicate anything that Eisenstein has done on screen, but rather quotes and incorporates fragments of Eisentein''s movies with the visual commentaries of Greenaway. I read some critical opinions about viewers ''getting tired'' by the too intense camera work - I do not agree with them. When what you see on screen is expressive and interesting you cannot get tired, as one does not get tired of seeing more masterpieces in an art museum, or of listening to fine opera or classical music. Sets are as exuberant and as complex as an architect mind like Greenaway''s can conceive. Overall Eisenstein in Guanajuato was for me a very satisfying and surprisingly entertaining experience.