Marcie Begleiter’s directorial debut, Eva Hesse, traces the enthralling life of the eponymous visual artist. The film is superb, supported by rigorous archival documentation and buoyed by Hesse’s compelling biography, irresistible charisma and remarkable artistic achievements. While the film lacks the aesthetic boldness of its protagonist and features some narrative tangents, it is nevertheless a captivating and worthwhile portrayal of a crucial cultural figure.
Eva Hesse was a Hamburgian Jew born in 1936. She escaped the wrath of the Nazis and immigrated with her family to New York in 1939. Hesse began her career as an abstract expressionist painter in 1959, but it was not until after a one-year residency in Kettwig, Germany with her then-husband, sculptor Tom Doyle, in 1965 that Hesse rose to prominence. Her fame came mostly as a post-minimalist sculptor. For the rest of the decade, she was a steadfast presence in the Manhattan culture scene.
While an undeniable creative genius, Hesse was also dogged by misfortune throughout her short life. Her grandparents and most of her extended family were exterminated in the death camps. Her mentally ill mother committed suicide in 1945. Her marriage to Doyle was brief and fractious. Most tragically, Hesse was plagued with a brain tumor, which led to three surgeries in less than a year and her untimely death at age 34 in 1970.
Rather than simply be satisfied with bringing such a rich and dramatic life to cinema, Begleiter instead put in astounding effort to craft her documentary. She poured through Hesse’s personal journals, reading thousands of pages of material. As a result, she tells the story of Hesse’s meteoric rise and heartbreaking demise in the artist’s own words, using voiceover readings (excellently performed by Selma Blair). The effect cannot be overstated; the pathos brought to the screen through this labor-intensive touch elevates Eva Hesse from a story about a remarkable artist to a truly human tale of life and its vagaries. Instead of a resplendent celebration of Hesse’s epoch-defining art, which would be a perfectly viable work, the film is elevated to a commentary on what it means to be human.
In addition to capturing an authentic snapshot of the human experience, Eva Hesse also provides a vivid encounter with the electric energy of the 1960s. This is a decade that is often victim to fetishization but is here handled capably and specifically. For example, after her first brain surgery in autumn 1969, Hesse moved in with a friend living in Woodstock, but the film does not make reference to the just-finished music festival.
Eva Hesse bridged the crucial cultural shift from the Beats to the hippies to the mainstreaming of counterculture, and the documentary does this as well. Because the film is so centered on the self-reflective writing of Hesse, it manages to speak about the cultural transformation as it was experienced, as a subtle and barely noticeable change. Looking back on the 1960s from 2016, it is easy to perceive this shift and think of it as coherent and linear, to assign agency to cultural actors. What Eva Hesse does is to forswear the benefit of hindsight in order to present a truer account of change and to demonstrate that the artists themselves, while aware they were pushing the envelope, were not conscious of the wholesale shift. It is an organic and subtle portrait of a period that is often treated otherwise.
The documentary has some false notes. It is occasionally too focused upon biographical exposition or gives space to only tangentially-related aspects of Hesse’s life. The filmmaker gets too attached to the interviews she conducted and strays from Hesse’s journals. While at times, the cinematography is dynamic and thrilling, just as often it feels staid. In fairness, films of this sort are inherently difficult to craft, being a visual piece about a visual artist; the film itself cannot live up to its subject matter artistically or else its subject matter would be unworthy of cinematic portrayal.
These issues are overcome. Mostly, this is due to Hesse herself, whose writing is engaging, whose movie-star physical beauty was extensively photographed by her ‘60s contemporaries and whose cutting-edge artwork demands creative cinematography from the film’s crew. Hesse is so appealing as a subject that a viewer will wait through the film’s weak spots. And Begleiter has provided a film that cultivates an array of emotional responses. At times, Eva Hesse is triumphant and at others tear-jerking. It explains the technical aspects of Eva’s latex-based sculpture but also alludes to the verve and sex appeal of the 1960s. Begleiter deserves credit for such an expansive and laborious work, even if it is Hesse herself that will keep the viewer’s attention on the screen.