alma matters

tonight's spoonful of georgina hale is cool and veiled and gorgeous. its a expertly-captured still from ken russell's 'mahler.' the real alma mahler looked nothing like this, but that matters very little i suppose. she still turns in a smoldering performance. now that i think about it, she's almost more central in the film than robert powell's gustav mahler himself. gerogina has scenes so haunting and inexpressibly beautiful in this film... the sequence of her running across the countryside to quiet cows and crying babies and even an oktoberfest so her husband can get some composing done are almost small films in and of themselves.