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There is a shot in "Edvard Munch" which looks like an image of a distant cliff with thick dark ridges running vertically down its face; rough, shadowy indentations pockmark its entire surface. In fact, this is a close-up of a canvas on which Edvard Munch has been building layer upon layer of paint. It is the culmination of a series of scenes in which we have seen the increasingly frenetic artist paint, scrape away, re-paint, and nearly bore a hole into the canvas as he constantly revises his work. I cannot recall an instance in which the tactile elements of a painting have ever been captured so vividly on film: the sound of a knife scraping away paint, the actual texture of the paint layered on a canvas. Then again I have never seen a film quite like Peter Watkins´ brilliant "Edvard Munch" (1973).

The film primarily covers a ten year period from 1884-1894 (Munch from age 21 to 31) though it frequently returns to Munch´s tragedy-scarred childhood. Nineteenth century Christiania (today known as Oslo) was a city plagued by disease, both of the consumptive and venereal kind, and the Munch family, though not poor, was not spared its blight. Edvard´s mother, brother and his beloved sister Sophie died when he was still a child, and these crippling losses would haunt him the rest of his life.

The film begins in 1884 when young Munch (played by Geir Westby who, like the rest of the cast, was a non-professional actor) is a member of the Bohemian intellectual circle spearheaded by Hans Jaeger (Kåre Stormark). Jaeger´s radical philosophy (a sloppy mix of nihilism and anarchy) influenced Munch greatly, though Watkins contends that another relationship, his long-running, tempestuous affair with the mysterious Mrs. Heiberg (Gro Fraas), was even more important in shaping the painter´s life. The story progresses through Munch´s formative years as an artist and details his battles with his own inner demons as well as the art critics of his time.

As in his other films, Watkins employs pseudo-documentary techniques to recreate historical events, but "Edvard Munch" does not so much blur the lines between documentary and fiction as render the distinction altogether meaningless. Watkins narrates in a dry, formal voice that provide historical and political context, and all of Munch´s dialogue is taken directly from his diaries. Yet Watkins hardly restricts his film to a "just the facts" approach. Indeed, "Edvard Munch" is one of the most wildly innovative films I have ever seen.

The film leaps back and forth through time, frequently flashing back to Munch´s childhood. The elliptical editing conveys Munch´s emotional state rather than simply connecting a series of events in typical biopic style. As Munch scratches frantically at his canvas, we return to the moment when his sister Sophie was dying of tuberculosis. Sometimes characters speak directly to the camera, either speaking on their own or answering the questions of an off-screen female voice. Where this voice comes from I have no idea, but I am also quite certain it doesn´t matter. The actors sometimes improvised their lines, responding to questions with their own opinions rather than from Watkins´ script. In "Punishment Park" (1970) Watkins also allowed his non-professional actors to improvise and achieved mixed success, but in this film the strategy works to perfection.

All of these creative tools (discontinuous editing, characters looking at the camera, etc.) have been used in other films but the remarkable thing about "Edvard Munch" is that none of them function as Brechtian devices. Though the film has reflexive elements, it is not overtly self-conscious in the way that Godard´s films of the 60s or many of today´s post-modern films are. Rather, this hodge-podge of stylistic choices creates the eerie sense that we are peering in on past events as they are happening; the movie has an immediacy and physicality that lend it extraordinary power. Watkins has created a unique cinematic point of view that I can only describe as a free-associative semi-omniscient perspective which leaves open all possibilities at any point in time. Any shot that best conveys even the most subtle nuance is fair game. In art, there are no rules save those meant to be broken.

No subject is off-limits either. Though the film is about Edvard Munch, sometimes the story expands to depict life in Christiania, where the bourgeoisie thrived but the working class suffered from wretched labor conditions as well as rampant disease. Watkins has always been a politically engaged director and he lavishes attention on the world around Munch in order to avoid the romantic depiction of the artist as a solitary genius. Munch was shaped not just by mentors such as Hans Jaeger and, later, August Strindberg, but also by the conditions in which he was raised; his melancholia was not just artistic self-indulgence, but the logical response of a sensitive intellect to the squalor and inequity he witnessed every day (some scholars have also suggested that Munch suffered from bipolar disorder, an issue not addressed in the film).

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