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Sketches of Frank Gehry [2007] (REGION 1) (NTSC)


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One for the Gehry fanboys only, I'm afraid
Review date: 2007-07-21 Rating: 4 out of 10

This film as a fly-on-the wall look into the world of Frank Gehry is surprisingly uninformative. It's really just a love-in between Pollack and Gehry who seem to spend quite a lot of the film in mutual congratulation and affirmation.

The film also contains quite a lot of nonsense in its bid to triumph Gehry as the world's greatest living architect, which obviously he isn't. We get Pollack telling us that Gehry was one of the first architects since God was a boy to show an interest in art and artists. Obviously Leonardo was just playing at the whole art thing.... And the likes of Corb, Mies, Aalto, they didn't have any interest in art, did they. We get some guy from the Disney Music Hall telling us how amazing Frank is, because, when he was designing the concert hall, he put his need to make wacky shapes to the background and considered the acoustics. WOW - who'd have thought an architect designing a music hall would have stopped to think about acoustics, eh?

Annoyingly, Gehry lumps himself in the same class as Alvar Aalto, which I think is highly arrogant and entirely wrong - Aalto never worked in the arbitrary way that Gehry appears to, as shown in this film when he just adapts models by ripping off bits of card or cutting it with scissors. You become aware that the process of design for Gehry is one of form-making alone, there is little though of inhabitation, its just about making a building that shouts at you - "Hey, I'm big, I'm brash, I'm a Gehry Building". Hardly very Aalto.

Perhaps owing to the brashness and arbitrary nature of his design, a lot of American CEOs, film stars and sculptors come on to tell us that Frank is "the man" and even, bizarrely, Bob Geldof says that whilst 95% of the time if he was introduced to an architect, he'd hit them first, he reckons Gehry's wonderful. I never realised Michael Eisner, Dennis Hopper and our Bob were such architecture aficionados. My take on this is that America needs to triumph an architect who is at best mediocre in the face of far stronger designers in Europe currently, so Frank happens to be the one they've chosen.

Disappointingly, there are very few voices of dissent in the film. Charles Jencks tells us that Gehry has made some awful buildings, but we don't get to find out which ones he means. The only critic who is given time to speak is a squeaky-voiced intellectual, the insinuation being that the people who don't get Frank's work are just lilly-livered academics who have no fire in their bellies. Meanwhile Richard Serra, bizarrely wearing a white dressing gown and sitting in a chair that resembles a throne goes on to tell us that anyone who does criticise Frank is "no better than a fly buzzing around the neck of a mighty lion".

The previous reviewer said that Gehry is unpretentious. I can only assume he hasn't watched many films about Gehry, or indeed watched this film very closely. Gehry admits he has a massive ego but tries to disguise it. But he's not very good at that, insisting on a quid pro quo arrangement to tutor if he is allowed to play ice hockey against the varsity team. Or getting a former client to come on to wax about spending US$6m on preliminary drawings for a house that in the end was never built.

So this is a film for fanboys by fanboys, unfortunately. Things that are interesting within it are the dichotomies in Frank - he says he wants to push limits, but when Pollack asks him why he doesn't paint, he said he would never even try it - which is odd for a supposedly ground-breaking visionary. Cue sycophantic comment by Pollack that the materials and surfaces of Gehry's buildings are as good as the canvas of any masterpiece. When asked about where Gehry gets his inspiration from, something you'd genuinely want to understand from a film like this, Frank glibly replies to look in a waste paper bin and the crumpled paper forms and the voids... inspiration is everywhere. Really Frank, is it? Gee, man, let me write that down, thanks for your insight! Statements like that do little to assure you that there is any depth to the work. Yes, Gehry has pushed computer aided design forward, and like Hadid, he has made architecture more sculptural by using advanced techniques. This film does show some of this, and it is revealing in the arbitrary nature of the work. But for the most part, this film is a chorus of affirmation, hail our great California-based architect.

Far better is "My architect", where, as an illegitimate son, Nathaniel Kahn manages to preserve some distance and occasional disdain for his father's character and work. Its a far more balanced portrayal of a great architect than this work is, but then again, Kahn and Gehry should hardly be placed in the same sentence.

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Reviews


An interesting and entertaining portrait of an unpretentious architect...
Review date: 2006-09-23 Rating: 8 out of 10

Ironically Sydney Pollack's warm, intelligent portrait of his longtime friend, architect Frank Gehry, is probably the best film he's made in years. Casually recording Gehry at work and while driving, and outside the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles while it is still under construction, Pollack has made an intimate documentary of an architect who over the years has revolutionized how we see buildings, steadily redefining our relationship between space and light.

From the outset it becomes pretty obvious that Gehry has never let professional limitations get to him and he's notoriously rejected much of the artistic conservatism of the past. Consequently, he's created architectural designs that just don't conform to the normal, predictable rules of geometry.

Obviously whether you like his work is a matter of taste - I find a lot of his work rather cold and ugly - but it is absolutely fascinating to watch his metamorphosis take place, from the design stage, where his ideas originate as doodles on paper and assemblages of cardboard and tape, to their transformation into models and then the finished product.

Of course the final test comes when they are molded into glass and titanium, and we finally get to see the end result of Gehry's vision. At barely ninety minutes, Pollack seems intent to cram a lot into his film: We get interviews with patrons, admirers and friends, including Bob Geldoff, the former Disney executives Michael D. Eisner and Michael S. Ovitz the Guggenheim chief Thomas Krens and Herbert Muschamp, the former architecture critic of The New York Times.

Perhaps most interesting are the graphic shorts of Gehry's most crowning achievements. Along with the Walt Disney Concert Hall, there's the Disney Ice rink in Anaheim and of course, the Guggenheim Museum of Bilbao that towers majestically above the city.

Not all critics are favorable; Pollack also interviews Hal Foster, an art critic and Princeton professor, who is far more critical of Mr. Gehry's reputation, and of the kind of "cultural branding," and the propensity towards architectural trendiness that his fame represents. But Gehry is always affable if not a little bit crusty and is more than willing to listen and take note of his potential detractors.

This movie, for the most part does a good job of balancing exploration of his personality with admiration of his work. As expected, it's Gehry who is probably the most frank and harshly candid observer of his work. And he even admits that it takes him at least a year to let go of a lot of his work once it is finished. In the end, what we get is a fascinating portrait of a visual genius, a hardworking and refreshingly unpretentious man who has devoted his life to obtaining creative freedom through is work. Mike Leonard September 06.

Product Details/Specifications


Actor(s):
Dennis Hopper
Sydney Pollack
Edward Ruscha
Bob Geldof
Milton Wexler

Creators:
Bob Geldof (Primary Contributor)
Edward Ruscha (Primary Contributor)
Sydney Pollack (Cinematographer)
Claudio Rocha (Cinematographer)
Ultan Guilfoyle (Cinematographer)
George Tiffin (Cinematographer)
Marcus Birsel (Cinematographer)

Recording label: Sony Pictures
Manufacturer: Sony Pictures
EAN: 0043396155190
Binding: DVD
Number of items: 1
Format: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Colour, Dolby, DVD-Video, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC,
Release date: 2006-08-22
Universal product code (UPC): 043396155190
Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
Region code: 1
Running time: 84 minutes
Theatrical release date: 2005
Language: English (Original Language)
Language: Unknown (Unknown)
Language: French (Subtitled)

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