OVID.tv Presents BOSCH: THE GARDEN OF DREAMS Film Review

One comments with a smile that when Bosch created this work he was competing with God. Turkish author Orhan Pamuk – who among other credits has created an entire museum to collect artifacts owned by the imagined personalities in his novel The Museum of Innocence— talks about the painting’s “personality”. Soprano Renee Fleming finds the music score in a small section and sings it. Author Salman Rushdie notes the chaos in the canvas and dubs it “contemporary”. We meet an X-ray informed art restorer who shares her admiration for Bosch’s brush strokes, and his secret family formula for paint passed on through the generations. We meet a neuroscientist taking us on a CT scan tour of a dreamer’s brain.

We also see the festive phantasmagoria Bosch created come alive in a yearly Bosch parade, reminding this writer of an ancient pagan festival held yearly in Southern Italy. We learn of how bible and nature were the two books of the times, and how this painting’s sponsor was presumably keen to use it as a primer for his sons on the ways of the world. We learn the word polysemy- explaining how everyone then was quite used to multiple meanings in the memes of their time.

OVID.tv Presents Film that Should be THE Primer on Art Appreciation

And more, and more, and more—without a minute’s lag in our attention! In this writer’s view, Director José Luis López-Linares’ 90-minute film has a stimulating and engaging breadth comparable to that of its subject. We see not one focal point, but rather an explosion of points of view. If you linger too long in one spot you miss the panorama. If you just take in the panorama, you are bereft of delighting in the hidden-in-plain-sight cornucopia of Bosch’s vision. You too may end up watching the film a second time, and finding it even richer in the return trip.