All his life, the churn of history has spoken to 78-year-old Anselm Kiefer, who has responded with imposingly environmental, mythic and beautiful paintings and sculptures that get at something intrinsic about postwar Germany’s hard relationship with its past. His born-in-the-same-year countryman, filmmaker Wim Wenders, is no slouch either. For his new documentary, Anselm, the director has fashioned a mesmerizing engagement with Kiefer’s art, including just enough face time with the subject to elevate the work’s immersive, bleak majesty, rather than give it an aggrandizing spin. The result is also one of the year’s most memorable theatrical experiences. A child of World War II’s rubble and ruin, Kiefer fostered a sensibility about history designed to provoke those who would quickly forget. His art, dense with paint, ash, straw and lead, regularly stunned — a bridge between the spiritual and the earthen. As he evolved from pushing German audiences, his work grew in scale and scope (and stature) to take on the many ways humans wrestle with destruction and renewal, blending elements of science, alchemy, mysticism and philosophy.–Los Angeles Times