425 Antonio Gaudí

[Svevan]

I adore the score for this film, as I feel it's truly representative of Gaudi's architecture: at times fantastic, borderline atonal, or ambient, while at other times fully melodic and "western" (at some points, Takemitsu combines the two modes as well). Gaudi's architecture is always grounded in the shapes we come to understand as "a house" or "a courtyard" but then he warps it into a Lewis Carroll fantasy.

Bought this sight-unseen cause I like Teshigahara and art history; couldn't have been happier with it, unless perhaps I had someone willing to see it with me!

[Magic Hate Ball]

This is a rather captivating little film. It flawlessly showcases Gaudi's work, its features, how it fits in with society, and how society lives in it or around it, and even what inspired it. I'm a huge fan of Gaudi, even though I have never seen his work in person, and so this felt a little like taking a leisurely trip through Europe, visiting his buildings and churches. Some shots were exactly that, actually, just long dollies or pans of ceilings and walls. He was an astounding architect in that he captured the beauty and wildness of nature without his buildings being ridiculous-looking, out of place, or painful to walk through. The whirlpool ceiling is one of my favorites, as is the church in the woods with the flower-shaped windows. You get the impression that it simply grew from the earth, not that it was built.

I don't see any problems with this being a Criterion release. It fits neatly with plenty of extras.

I didn't liked the score. Mostly the kind of slowed down glass harmoncia sound that plays during almost the whole thing.

Whenever that would start up I kept half-expecting it to be the theme from Fellini's Casanova. I liked the score nonetheless.

[Pete]

I wonder if Teshigahara here (in Gaudi) was an influence on Tarkovsky for his ending in Rublev. It's probably just 'great minds think alike'... but their reverence is astonishingly similar, and similarly astonishing.

[dad1153]

Nobody cares: I have seen the movie with one person snoring next to me, and two people behind me commenting everything they saw on the screen; "It's beautiful", "Oh, I like that" "it's the Sagrada Familia in the background!", surely my worst screening experience to date.

Saw "Antonio Gaudí" yesterday afternoon at a surprisingly-packed Paris Theater in New York City. My luck that, on the same week that I discover "Woman in the Dunes" and "The Face of Another" for the first time, I get to see a Teshigahara movie on the big screen. Also my luck: a preppy asshole answers his cellphone and starts talking for two whole minutes before me and everybody else in the theater shames him into going outside to answer his damn phone. Some people!

I can't recall the last time I saw a 4x3 color movie in a theater but it doesn't matter once the rhythm of the documentary's oddly-whacked-but-strangely-appropriate Tôru Takemitsu music (I didn't felt it was dated in the 80's at all), excellent cinematography and smooth editing got a firm hold of my complete, undivided attention. I'm not an architect buff and I'd never heard or known about Antonio Gaudí before (I recognized a couple of the buildings from Antonioni's "The Passenger" and Whit Stillman's "Barcelona") but this wordless biography-by-proxy from Teshigahara started slow (almost nodded off at the 15 min. mark) and then hits its stride at the half-hour mark. The final 15 or so minutes dedicated to the Templo de La Sagrada Familia's unfinished structures were mesmerizing. It's the type of cinematic experience that makes you glad we live in the age of Google and the internet so you can fill in the blanks (as I've done all day looking up Gaudí's biography). The final few shots of the mammoth unfinished temple from the POV's of the other Gaudí-designed Barcelona locales we've visited prior to going there were masterstrokes that put the entire experiment into perspective.

Those with a deep appreciation for visual aesthetics within the realm of organic structures (or just plain architecture buffs) will love this. I'm glad I saw "Woman in the Dunes" beforehand because that prepared me for the oddity that is a visually alluring contemporary color movie shot in 4x3 framing by choice (instead of traditional widescreen or anamorphic). If anything "Antonio Gaudí" makes the best advertisement to make one go visit Barcelona than any TV commercial or tourist board campaign ever could.

[movielocke]

I started to watch this yesterday and discovered this is a movie that must be watched middle-of-the-day with a large cup of coffee, definitely not began after midnight just because you think you can finish a 72 minute movie before bedtime. Soothing music, plus gorgeous images, plus no narration = a powerful soporific effect. Saturday it is!

Interestingly, I was repeatedly reminded of the phenomenal use of 3D in Cave of Forgotten dreams and how that so crucially aids and enhances your perception with the additional axis. Five minutes in, I was aching to see this stuff in person, without the flattening effect of a camera.

[zedz]

Five minutes in, I was aching to see this stuff in person, without the flattening effect of a camera.

Barcelona is a wonderful city, but even if you go there just to see Gaudi buildings / architecture it's well worth the trip.

[Moe Dickstein]

3D would be difficult for things like architecture.

If you keep the scale, the depth effect on such large things would be minimal, and if you exaggerate it then things begin to look like little models. You can see some cases of this in Pina where it was used on purpose.

[zedz]

I take your point in general, but 3D Gaudi would be a thrill a minute: those tiny open walkways hundreds of feet above the ground on the Sagrada Familia? Weaving in and out of the massive organic columns in the Park Guell? Cavorting among the alien shapes on the roof of La Pedrera, or looking up from its courtyard? That'd be eye candy for the ages, and totally spectacular in 3D. And the subtleties of texture and surface shape would be wonderful in closeup.

[movielocke]

I take your point in general, but 3D Gaudi would be a thrill a minute: those tiny open walkways hundreds of feet above the ground on the Sagrada Familia? Weaving in and out of the massive organic columns in the Park Guell? Cavorting among the alien shapes on the roof of La Pedrera, or looking up from its courtyard? That'd be eye candy for the ages, and totally spectacular in 3D. And the subtleties of texture and surface shape would be wonderful in closeup.

Paging Werner Herzog...

[jindianajonz]

I take your point in general, but 3D Gaudi would be a thrill a minute: those tiny open walkways hundreds of feet above the ground on the Sagrada Familia? Weaving in and out of the massive organic columns in the Park Guell? Cavorting among the alien shapes on the roof of La Pedrera, or looking up from its courtyard? That'd be eye candy for the ages, and totally spectacular in 3D. And the subtleties of texture and surface shape would be wonderful in closeup.

I agree. Some of the most impressive parts of Casa Batllo are the organicly curving doors and the subdued swirling patterns on the ceiling. I would love to be able to revisit these in 3D, because 2D just doesn't do justice to the beauty of these things. I don't think there is any way to reproduce the magnifiscence of the Sagrada Familia interior, but 3D would be awesome for some of the closer shots, like the various sculptures on the nativity and passion facades.

[Mr Sausage]

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[movielocke]

An amazing little one minute animation showing how the Sagrada Familia will grow to its completion between 2013 and 2026

[Mr Sausage]

Hope no one minds if I get a preliminary post out of the way since I have no time tomorrow and will probably have forgotten everything by the time I'm free.

I'll admit to voting for this one because the description on the DVD case sounded really interesting, but I should've known better. I'd forgotten that I'm mostly unmoved by architecture. I had trouble paying attention for any length of time. I drifted in and out, mostly admiring the score but often using it as background for something I was imagining in my head. I appreciated everything in the film without being the slightest bit engaged with it. This might've had something to do with my mood, but I suspect my reaction wouldn't be much different at any other time. I just don't get much from staring at buildings endlessly. I think if the film had been less placid, the energy of the camera would've caught my attention. But the film stays rather sedate, letting the architecture speak for itself. Not a choice I can criticize, but not one I felt moved by, either. This is no doubt my fault. There were a number of striking sections, tho'. What I most remember are a series of windows that look like gaping, deformed mouths, which are cut between individually for a few minutes before we cut to an establishing shot of all of them, breaking the spell as you see that they are indeed just parts of a building that people can mill around. But for a few minutes it was like a collection of grotesques or something. Very well done.

I'm skeptical that a movie like this will provoke any kind of meaningful discussion, even amongst its admirers. I'd love to be proven wrong (Cria Cuervos got more discussion than I thought it would, while Sweet Smell of Success got far less), but if this one stays mostly inactive I'll consider moving on to the next film early. But then maybe I'll be surprised.

[matrixschmatrix]

Whew, I was in the same boat- architecture, as an artform, has never really been something I fully understand, and this movie isn't really one to draw you in; it's more than straightforwardly presentational, but it's not really going to meet one halfway in trying to understand what it's showing. I don't know what I imagined this would be, really, as what I got was pretty much exactly what I was told I would get: gliding camera moves over Gaudi buildings. Perhaps I just assumed there wold be something else for more than a few minutes, or that it would be stylized in a more extreme Koyaanisqatsi sort of way, but nope.

Even if I had responded more to it, though, I'm not sure of what I would have to say about this- it suffers from the dancing about architecture issue to an unrivaled degree.

[MichaelB]

Can I strongly recommend the Robert Hughes and Ken Russell extras if you haven't already seen them? As I recall, they provide a fair bit more context.

[jindianajonz]

I love Gaudi architecture and always enjoy revisiting this movie, but watching it again for the film club made me realize this may be one of the worst films in the collection. The thing I kept asking myself is "what is this film trying to achieve?" Obviously it wants to show off Gaudi's work, but who is the audience? You would think a film like this would be created to introduce somebody to Gaudi's work, but it is a pretty terrible introduction- there is no context for anything that is shown, and often there are few clues to even let us know we've jumped from one of Gaudi's works to the next one. In fact, Teshigahara almost deliberately confuses the audience by introducing us to architecture not with a Gaudi building, but with a building nextdoor to one. The first "Gaudi-like" building you see in the film (after a rather confusing introduction featuring a variety of paintings that probably made some wonder if Gaudi was a painter as well as an architect) was actually Casa Amatller, which is situated next to Gaudi's own (and my personal favorite) Casa Batllo on the wonderfully named Block of Discord. But Teshigahara does nothing to let the audience know that we haven't started looking at Gaudi's work yet, and instead we are, for some reason, still looking at other parts of Barcelona. If you want to know which work is Gaudi's, you must bring that knowledge with you. Thus this film seems to be serving the rather narrow audience of people who have already visited and appreciate Gaudi, and even then it doesn't really give them anything new- it just stirs up their own memories and experiences of being there.

I also think that Teshigahara did not make very good use of the medium itself to present these buildings. One of the most wonderful things about Gaudi is the depth to his buildings- the way surfaces gently and unexpectedly curve and warp. Film would seem to be a great way to capture this, since it allows Teshigahara to circle around and object and let the audience see the change in sillhouettes, but he almost never does this. Instead, and despite the promise of "bold camerawork" on the back of the dvd case, he almost always plants the camera on the ground in a particular spot and either leaves it completely still or just pans and tilts, leaving the image completely flat. Sometimes this was probably forced in him- it's very hard to get a circling perspective of a zoomed in shot of a tower hundreds of meters above- but there were also a bunch of shots of building interiors where there was no reason he couldn't move the camera a little. I counted three times where he did something more interesting with Gaudi buildings- there was a lovely scene during sunset of shadows spreading across the Nativity Facade of Sagrada Familia, he slowly walked through a passage at Park Guell to allow us to see the texture of the cieling, and he circled around a pillar in a building I'm not familiar with, but which Teshigahara uncharacteristically gave us a point of reference to by showing us a sign that called it the "Gaudi Crypt" (though I believe that despite what the name implies, Gaudi isn't actually buried here- this is just a crypt that he designed. Gaudi is actually buried in a sort of basement below the Sagrada Familia, and this area was closed off to tourists when I was there.) These three shots proved to be the most exciting and dynamic in the film for me, and it's a shame Teshigahara didn't do more like them. Instead we mostly get flat pictures that are pretty much motionless except for the occasional bird flying by or (at a particularly tense moment) a train billowing past.

In fact, while watching this I often wished that I was looking through a book rather than watching a film. Unless somebody really wanted to see tourists dancing or a local seafood market in action (in which case there are certainly better movies that show this) a book would give the same beautiful framing as the film, but wouldn't constrain us to only study the images for as long as Teshigahara wanted us to. I doubt Mr Sausage or Matrix felt this way, but there were actually a few bits I would have liked to have seen for longer, but instead the shot jumped right as I noticed something interesting in the corner (and with Gaudi, there is almost always another interesting thing to notice if you look long enough). So if the editing is constraining, what does the film bring to the table that a book couldn't do? I already discussed how Teshigahara makes very poor use of motion, so it's certainly not that. The only other thing a film can do is include music, and while the score for this film is always pleasant, it is never nearly as crucial to this work as it is for films like the Qatsi trilogy. It makes me wonder why Teshigahara felt film was the proper medium to capture all of this, because I really don't see him doing much with it (though if he had used 3D technology, I think the results would have been spectacular- 3D seems just as mandatory for Gaudi as it was for Herzog's Cave of Forgotten Dreams, and for very similar reasons.)

(sidenote: I hadn't thought to compare this to the Qatsi trilogy, Matrix, but once you mentioned it I realized they really are quite similar in terms of content. So what makes those films work while this film fails? I'm guessing it's the lack of motion )

So yeah, despite loving the subject and enjoying the film, in the end I'm forced to admit that the film just isn't very good. Teshigahara doesn't come close to doing justice to the subject matter, he's not going to convert anybody over who didn't already have some knowledge and interest in Gaudi, and he apparently doesn't even get the man's name right- he is called Antoni Gaudi, not Antonio as the title suggests. This film is just a collection of Teshigahara's vacation slides, without the benefit of having him in the same room explaining what it is we're seeing and why he felt it was important to capture these images. I'm sad to see that my fears were confirmed, and that people who weren't familiar with Gaudi continue to be unmoved by him. I think this only underscores how big a failure this film is- it's almost an accomplishment to showcase such an incredible body of work in a way that is so unevocative. If there's anybody who would still like to know more about Gaudi after this viewing experience, as MichaelB says, the Criterion disc also includes a much more informative and conventional BBC documentary, which also features a very dry, cynical, and British host. It's probably a much better introduction to Gaudi than the main feature was.

[MichaelB]

If there's anybody who would still like to know more about Gaudi after this viewing experience, as MichaelB says, the Criterion disc also includes a much more informative and conventional BBC documentary, which also features a very dry, cynical, and British host.

I'm not entirely convinced that the ghost of the very Australian Robert Hughes would thank you for that! But it is a superb documentary - in fact, this is a rare example of a Criterion disc where the supporting features are at least as stimulating as the main one.

[jindianajonz]

It's been a while since I watched it, but I remember one or two lines he said that almost seemed dismissive of Gaudi's work and made me think the host didn't really enjoy being there. Something akin to seeing a Picasso and commenting "he tried to paint a face, but wasn't very successful at it"

[matrixschmatrix]

I had skipped the supporting features, I'll have to go back and watch them.

While watching this, my girlfriend more than once questioned what the movie was doing that wouldn't be accomplished by a photo gallery, and while I feel as though it does have a certain entrancing quality (due to the music as much as anything else) it wasn't a question I ever felt able to answer fully. I did like the tiny pieces of external information we get about Gaudi right at the end of the movie, and to my eyes at least, interspersing such snippets throughout would have held my attention better- not asking it to act as a conventional documentary, certainly, but more of a dialog between the little fragments of who Gaudi was and what he thought and how that was expressed in his work.

[swo17]

Obviously it wants to show off Gaudi's work, but who is the audience?

For what it's worth, I watched this with some of my wife's family a few years ago (none of them particularly into film, but very much into art, and fans of Gaudi) and they couldn't take their eyes off it.

[jindianajonz]

Obviously it wants to show off Gaudi's work, but who is the audience?

For what it's worth, I watched this with some of my wife's family a few years ago (none of them particularly into film, but very much into art, and fans of Gaudi) and they couldn't take their eyes off it.

See, that's how I felt too, but "Reaffirming an already existing appreciation for Gaudi" seems like an awfully narrow and rather pointless goal for a film to strive for. It really does just preach to the choir.

[matrixschmatrix]

I'm thinking of giving this as a Christmas gift to my brother in law, who's not a film buff but who did come back from a trip to Spain astonished at the Gaudi architecture he had seen- I can imagine that the problem here isn't that it's a bad movie, it's that it's a movie whose most prominent qualities aren't necessarily ones that mean anything to me as a cinephile. Presenting Gaudi's work in a way that's entrancing- to anybody obviously has some value.

[YnEoS]

I think some of the comments about the film not being "filmic" enough are just a tad dismissive. I agree that some motion control time lapse shots where the camera slow curves around Gaudi structures as the sun sets would make for a much sexier film. But from the shakiness of the camera moves that exist here, I'm assuming Teshigahara had limited resources for making this. But despite this, I think he was very much in control of and aware of the power of his medium. One of the advantages of film is not just its ability to move a viewpoint and travel through time, but also its ability to act as different mediums. So Teshigara can go in for closer more abstract shots of tiny details, and then pull out to wider shots showing people acting within it.

One particularly stunning moment for me, was when we are watching a young girl skate through some pillars when suddenly everyone vanished behind a pillar leaving the shot completely blank.



In fact there are a number of great series of shots where Teshigahara shows the flexibility of the medium. One I recall went something along the lines of...

Shot 1: Close Up of the Balcony of a building
Shot 2: Wider shots of people moving down the street past the building.
Shot 3: An Old photograph of the same building and same streets, but many years ago
Shot 4: A closer shot of the old photograph focusing once again on the building.

I guess it could've been approximated in a book, though we'd lose the movement of the people in the streets, and the possibility of seeing it projected.

I also think Teshigahara made particularly good use of lighting conditions and exposure in bringing out the various features of Gaudi's work. Sometimes it was very contrasty and harsh, focusing on certain traits unique look in certain rare conditions. Other times there was a nice large gradient of illumination exaggerating the curves and textures. And there were many wider shots where the lighting was more flat, focusing more on the overall shape and colors of objects.



These two shots of the same structure for example have quite different lighting conditions. The first being much more flat and accentuating its shape against the sky and creating a nice contrast against the exposer of the other towers. The second one had more range and focused more on the curvature and texture.

Of course it could be that Gaudi architectures just photographs wonderfully in a great many different lighting conditions, but I also wouldn't so quickly dismiss Teshigahara's aesthetic sensibilities as simply "flatly" photographing Gaudi in boring ways.

I'm not familiar with Gaudi's work outside of this film, and after viewing it I can't be completely sure what was and wasn't designed by him. As a primer or introduction to his architecture, this film certainly wasn't as informative as it could've been. But I found it to be a wonderfully pleasing aesthetic experience.

[knives]

Whew, I was in the same boat- architecture, as an artform, has never really been something I fully understand, and this movie isn't really one to draw you in; it's more than straightforwardly presentational, but it's not really going to meet one halfway in trying to understand what it's showing.

It's not related to Gaudi, but Ken Burns' doc on Frank Lloyd Wright gives a good primer on how to 'understand' or whatever term you wish to use architecture. It's also just plain entertaining.

[MichaelB]

I wish I had more time this week to rewatch things, because I remember originally watching the film as the fourth in a Teshigahara quadruple bill and despite it being made two decades after the rest, it was clearly the work of the same man - and equally clear from his earlier films that his interest in architecture is more than merely pictorial.

In particular, it's worth bearing in mind that Teshigahara was also a painter, sculptor, garden designer and flower arranger (a much more serious art form in Japan than in the West), and he'd been obsessed by Gaudí since 1959 - tellingly, before he made the fiction features on which his reputation mainly rests.