Cathedrals of Culture (October 17, 2014)
Films about architecture are always welcome, but always tricky to get right. Architecture is, after all, in the words of the great modernist Mies van der Rohe, ‘the will of an epoch translated into space.’
To experience architecture, you have to be there, but Wim Wenders had the promising idea that 3D cinema would be the next best thing. Being a filmmaker, Wim Wenders chose a building and then asked five international film directors to write and direct (and sometimes narrate) a short documentary about a building in their own country.
This is a great way for audiences to discover iconic buildings, but the scripts are underwhelming and the quality of the segments uneven.
Wenders kicks off with Hans Scharoun’s 1963 Berlin Philharmonic, a 50-year-old building that is still superb. Wenders focuses on the fact that this was the first concert hall where the orchestra and conductor are surrounded by the audience.
Symbolically or not, it was built on the edge of Potsdamer Platz which, after the war, was a no-man’s land, soon to be joined by the newly constructed Berlin Wall. The Philharmonic, optimistic, inclusive, open and beautiful; the Wall, pessimistic, restricted, oppressive and ugly.
Michael Glawogger’s National Library of Russia, could have been the most interesting film, but Gennadi Vengerov’s voice over narration is difficult to understand, and the script, mixing unidentified excerpts from masterpieces in the library with the script, is frustrating.
We learn very little about the mainly elderly female librarians who have devoted their lives to the building and, personalise the library in a way that is unknown to Western libraries.
Margreth Olin chose the stunning Oslo Opera House (2008) that rises dramatically like a white cathedral from the Fjord, and completely transforms a rundown, even dangerous corner of the city full of drug addicts and prostitutes.
Designed to encapsulate Norway’s socialist values, the huge slanted roof space (a bit like airplane wings) with its spectacular view of the Fjord is a public space, while below, ballet and opera is studied, practised and viewed. Unfortunately, the narration is insipid, being one of several films that insist on anthropomorphizing the buildings.
Michael Madsen’s interesting film about Norway’s ‘most humane’ high security prison interprets culture in the wider sense of the word. Art and literature take a back seat to the question of how a society treats those in its population who need to be excluded.
Although EMA architects designed the prison (in 2010) based on the idea of rehabilitation, we do not learn very much about the rehabilitation of society’s worst criminals. Apparently, views of nature, large exercise areas, even private areas for offenders in isolation, and a charming guest house in the woods for visiting families are helpful.
Again, the ‘talking prison’ narrative, written and voiced-over by Benedicte C Westin weakens the piece rather than enhancing it.
Robert Redford is the biggest name along with Wenders, and, in his exploration of the Salk Institute on the California coast in La Jolla, Redford came armed with Ed Lachman (Far from Heaven, Erin Brockovich, I’m Not There), one of the century’s greatest cinematographers.
Together they attempt to show how Louis I Kahn’s masterpiece was intended to be not only practical for medical research but conducive to new, creative ideas.
Instead of making the building speak, Redford incorporates excerpts from the late Jonas Salk (whose vaccine effectively ended polio in the Western world) and the late Louis I Kahn, along with various scientists and researchers who have made the institute their home away from home. The narration attempts to show how Kahn’s building reflects Salk’s high human ideals and aspirations.
The film ends with the weakest piece, perhaps because the Karim Ainouz’s exploration of the Pompidou Centre relies on an anthropomorphizing script. You feel you are taking a guided tour of the building led by one of those municipal tour guides with hordes of people dragging their weary body through rooms that all start to look alike.
There is nothing boring, however, about the Centre Georges Pompidou or Beaubourg, as it is called, from the controversy about the clearance of the cherished les Halles, to fact that this marks the first time international architects were allowed to participate in an architectural design competition.
You long to hear something from the architects, Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers about the place this icon to post-modernist architecture holds in the story of modern architecture.
by Joyce Glasser, MT film reviewer
