Director: Hiroshi Teshigahara
Music: Toru Takamitsu
Studio: Toho/Criterion Collection 425 (2 DVDs)
Video: 4:3 full screen, color and B&W (some extras 16:9)
Audio: Japanese Dolby Digital mono
Subtitles: English
Extras: Commentary track; Theatrical trailer; New interview with architect Arata Isozaki; Silent 16mm footage from the Teshigaharas first trip to Spain; “God’s Architect” – one-hour BBC widescreen special on Gaudi’s life and work; 15 minute B&W program on Gaudi directed by Ken Russell; “Sculptures by Sofu-Vita” – short film by Hiroshi on the sculptures of his father, Sofu; 36-p. illustrated booklet with new essay by art historian Dore Ashton, reminiscences by Hiroshi Teshigahara, and father and son discussing their trip to the West.
Length: 72 minutes (feature only)
Rating: ****(*)
The Catalonian architect Antonio Gaudi, who died in 1926, was probably the world’s most audacious architect ever, a man whose personality and works were full of contradictions. All of his buildings are in the Barcelona area of Spain but his reputation for coming up with the most visually amazing structures in the entire world is unquestioned. Simply looking at them, both in toto and in the smallest detail, is a unique artistic experience. Teshigahara exploits this quality in his not-quite-feature-length visual poem, with music and sound effects supplied by Toru Takamitsu, and only a couple brief portions with subtitles as someone explains some vital points about Gaudi’s work being viewed.
Hiroshi’s father, Sofu, had a noted ikabana school and was also a sculptor. Both his ikabana and wild sculptures had a similar Dionysian quality to Gaudi’s structures – and completely at the opposite pole from prevailing Japanese artistic taste. When the pair traveled to Barcelona for their first visit in 1959 the elder Teshigahara was captivated by all of Gaudi’s work that he saw. His son filmed them in 16mm without sound. They also paid a visit to Dali – another supporter of Gaudi – and his wife, which is included in the footage. In 1984 Hiroshi returned to Barcelona and filmed Gaudi’s structures in 35mm for this film. He shows the palace Gaudi designed for a tile manufacturer, the crypt for a monastery, the huge apartment building, the magical Guell park (which was originally intended to be a gated community of luxury homes), and simple buildings as well as rock outcroppings around Catalan which show some of the basic designs Gaudi incorporated in his work. The grand finale of all of these films is the Sagrada Familia cathedral – the science-fictionish fantasy structure taking up an entire block and not nearly finished after more than a century of construction. It may never be finished due to the cost, and several proposals about what to do with it are discussed. They include tearing it down (people either love or hate Gaudi’s work), and turning it into a railway station.
Gaudi went about his designs differently from any other architect. Rather than making drawings and plans, he first created models with string and scaled-down weights attached here and there to learn how best to build the structures. His interior works are visual labyrinths modeled on the feeling of a cave. But, as one critic put it, “a cave with God inside.” Gaudi was a very religious Catholic and raised money for the cathedral from private sources as personal penances. There are no straight lines in his designs – he said trees were his teacher, and one look at the ceiling supports in his structures and one will understand that. The whole of nature’s natural designs were what Gaudi attempted to bring to his sensuous architecture.
His role as a religious symbolist is best seen in the Sagrada Familia, but all of his buildings were capped with crosses. The one area of the cathedral where he failed was when he attempted to do sculptures of the human form for the lavish Nativity scene. Although he made castings over live models for the utmost realism, the sculptures all look like giant versions of the little statuettes one would find in a religious goods shop. The pious, ascetic architect even slept at the cathedral to be closer to his work. One critic characterizes Gaudi as “an intensely erotic Catholic virgin.”
Just as appreciation for Gaudi’s work has seen major ups and downs over the years, there will be some who will avidly dig into the spectacular images in this film and extras, and others who may find them ugly and not worth their attention. The transfers are excellent, as always. Takamitsu’s scoring and sounds fit the images beautifully. The Ken Russell short looked nothing like other work from this director – who is considered as outrageous in his own art as Gaudi was in his. However, the BBC color documentary is simply fascinating and fills in many details about the architect and his life which you don’t get from Teshigahara’s very striking art film.
– John Sunier
