'Anselm' documentary is a thrilling portrait of an artist at work

'Anselm' documentary is a thrilling portrait of an artist at work Enlarge this image toggle caption Janus Films Janus Films Every now and then you come across an artist — Aretha Franklin, say, or Marlon Brando — who radiate such raw, undeniable force that they feel as immense as the Amazon. Sponsor Message Shot in an astonishingly vivid 6K 3D — which captures art with dazzling clarity — Anselm offers both a thrilling portrait of the artist at work and, with the aid of terrific archival footage, lets us see what infuses his work with such intensity. In fascinating scenes, Wenders shows how the cocky, black-clad, elegantly grizzled 78-year-old artist creates his trademark effects — be it charring straw with flame throwers like the hero in a Tarantino movie or fastidiously pouring molten metal onto canvases with an elaborate contraption operated by an assistant. At once abstract and concrete, his work is all about remembering — and re-examining — a German tradition filled with pro-Nazi geniuses like Martin Heidegger and heroic witnesses like Paul Celan, whose Holocaust poem "Death Fugue" Kiefer takes as a touchstone.