A Sudden Glimpse to Deeper Things

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A Sudden Glimpse to Deeper Things

2024,

1h 30m,

Drama/

Biography/

Documentary

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15 Reviews

Tomatometer

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Popcornmeter

100%

Tomatometer

15 Reviews

Popcornmeter

Wilhelmina Barns-Graham was a painter, a visionary, an artist. She was a unique thinker. One day in May 1949, Barns-Graham, then 36 years old and an emerging figure in the modernist St. Ives group of artists, climbed the Grindelwald glacier in Switzerland. She experienced an aesthetic and spiritual epiphany which rewired her brain and transformed her art. She spent the rest of her life painting it. Through a cinematic immersion into her art and life, the film explores themes of gender, neurodiversity, climate change, and the nature of creativity from youth to old age.

Annabel Bai Jackson

Sight & Sound

Nov 20, 2025

The most sublime sequence has a group of Barns-Graham’s pictures appearing on screen, one after the other, beneath the sound of strings. When Cousins curates lightly enough, the work can speak for itself.

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Tara Brady

Irish Times

Nov 3, 2024

4/5

Barns-Graham was sidelined by the macho, modernist art community for much of her lifetime. She kept painting into her 90s and enjoyed considerable late recognition. One suspects she would have greatly appreciated Cousins’s idiosyncratic chronicle.

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Marina Ashioti

Little White Lies

Oct 22, 2024

3/5

As much as this is an ode to an artist neglected by the annals of mainstream art history, it’s also about another artist’s personal fixation, affinity, and desire to get as close as possible to their subject.

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Rich Cline

Shadows on the Wall

Oct 29, 2024

3.5/5

A bit indulgent, focussing on her art with only passing notes about her private life. But the film clips, audio recordings, archival snapshots, present-day footage and a wonderful collection of her work offer a fascinating glimpse into her unique mind.

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Alistair Harkness

Scotsman

Oct 26, 2024

4/5

Cousins recreates the hike in the film as part of his own abstract look at her life and work, eschewing the standard tropes of biography in favour of putting us inside her head.

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Erick Estrada

Cinegarage

Oct 25, 2024

100% a Mark Cousins documentary. [Full review in Spanish]

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Mark Cousins

Director

Tilda Swinton

Actor

Tilda Swinton

Narrator

Mark Cousins

Screenwriter

Mary Bell

Producer

Adam Dawtrey

Producer

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Synopsis

Wilhelmina Barns-Graham was a painter, a visionary, an artist. She was a unique thinker. One day in May 1949, Barns-Graham, then 36 years old and an emerging figure in the modernist St. Ives group of artists, climbed the Grindelwald glacier in Switzerland. She experienced an aesthetic and spiritual epiphany which rewired her brain and transformed her art. She spent the rest of her life painting it. Through a cinematic immersion into her art and life, the film explores themes of gender, neurodiversity, climate change, and the nature of creativity from youth to old age.

Director: Mark Cousins
Producer: Mary Bell, Adam Dawtrey
Screenwriter: Mark Cousins
Production Co: BofA
Genre: Drama, Biography, Documentary
Original Language: English
Runtime: 1h 30m

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