Sydney Pollack, an Academy Award winner, the director of "Out of Africa,"; Frank Gehry, the winner of Pritzker Architecture Prize, the architect of Bibao; they are friends.
Many people have approached Gehry to do a documentary for him. He asked Pollack to do it instead. "It's not just that I didn't know anything about making documentaries. I didn't even know anything about architecture," "That's why you're perfect,"
The movie started shooting in 2000, and finished in 2005. The whole structure of the movie is intertwined by the images of his architecture, conversation between Gehry and Pollack, and comments from other people, like his colleagues, his clients, his therapist, artists…and architects. In a sense this way is quite conventional, far from the forms of Gehry’s architecture. But five-year efforts do make many inspiring and intimating moments of the life of the architect and his architecture.
The scenes that Gehry is working are interesting. His partner sit with him side by side, making models by crumpling paper, cutting cardboards and taping them together, to reflect simultaneously his comments. And there are other people scanning the physical models or working on computer models. Without computer, Gehry’s buildings cant be constructed, but he himself doesn't know how to use it at all. I was joking that the reason why the movie is called Sketches of Frank Gehry is because he only does sketches himself, and for the rest of time, he just comments, other people will get it done. Sometimes you can feel his ways to copy with the forms are so subjective and irrational. But he can make it practical too, and more importantly, persuade the client to do it. And the products are so beautiful. Not every architect can achieve it even they are provided with enough money and support. City needs architecture like that, and the era needs architect like Gehry, but it is also scary to imagine a world full of the giant titanium sculpture. Fortunately and unfortunately, there is only one Gehry. ☺
There are some funny stories and conversations in the movie. Like when Gehry in year two of the architecture program, one of his lecturers called him in his office and suggested him to quit-“this is not for you”. And when he was designing this fish sculpture in front of the Ritz Carlton hotel in Barcelona, his client once called him furiously and said, I’m not spending millions dollar on a five star hotel to let my guests to see the asshole of a fish. His therapist, who he has been seeing for 35 years, said that after Gehry becoming famous, many architects seek for his treatment. “I can’t make them Gherys. I can open the gate of the flood, but if there is no flood behind the gate…”
Overall the whole movie is not critical enough. Like Roger Ebert commented, it is all about “Gehry is a genius”. Maybe as a friend, it is difficult for Pollack to be critical. Meanwhile, the interviewees he chose, most are artists, instead of architects. This makes the movie a little unbalanced.
