I wish I knew why I keep going to documentaries on modern artists. I mean, my feelings toward modern art are similar to my feelings towards trees – they’re all right, and I recognise some species, but I have no real interest in learning to appreciate them properly. That said, most of the documentaries are the stories of the lives of the artists, rather than the stories of their art. From that point of view, Gordon Crook served admirably – a artist living in New Zealand, and responsible for the banners in the Michael Fowler Centre, but not a New Zealand artist, he seems an interesting fellow. I think we got an idea of the sort of person he is, why he makes the sort of art he makes, and even some idea of some of the prejudices that float around the art world.
It was a fairly well-done documentary, though I didn’t understand why one of the women who figured prominently was in it – I mean, she was obviously an important and dear friend to him, but I didn’t understand her significance to the documentary. It might have been explained in a subtitle I missed.
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Avoiding the All Whites crowds, I made my way to My Dog Tulip, an animated version of J.R. Ackerley’s book about an Englishman’s love affair with his dog.
Er, in an agape sense, you understand.
The story is told from the point of view of a unmarried, educated English gentleman who fought in the First World War, and who acquired his dog (an Alsatian bitch) in his fifties. The accounts of the battle of wills with his sister when she moves in with them, the talk of “marrying” Tulip to various suitors, his interactions with others in the context of his dog, and his frank account of his dog’s bowel movements and urination felt very set in the time and place of the story, in the best possible way.
If you didn’t mind your child seeing (drawn) naked ladies riding a bull through the waves to an island (there’s a certain amount of illustrating of asides and divergences), then I think that kids would find it very entertaining; I certainly found it touching, and would consider watching it again.
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The Embassy was very crowded for Exit Through The Gift Shop, the movie where guerilla artist Banksy invites you to decide how much of what you see is real in an ostensible documentary about a man making a documentary about street art, who becomes a street artist himself… except that he produces none of the art, and decides to break into the art scene with a big show, where he simply tells others the concept, and gets them to create it.
The material about the other artists seems real enough, and it was certainly interesting to see some of the art being made, and to meet some of the people behind the art. But I would have actually liked to see a bit more about the idea behind public art in public spaces, like the “Astoria Scum River Bridge”.
That said – does it matter if the ostensible subject of the documentary, “Mr Brain-Wash”, is real, or a construct of a collective of artists, a public face which, among other things, makes it easier to sell the art, and thus make a living? I guess it all comes down to provenance again – like the movie My Kid Could Paint That, the art world feels that who made the painting and how is important. I don’t share that concern; but I also don’t buy paintings.
(Also, most of the art that we saw was… well, you could look at it, and you got the idea, and then you could move on – which is exactly what you want for art that people are passing in the street, but not necessarily for something you’re hanging on your wall and seeing every day.)
I liked it, but would have liked a straight-up doco about public spaces and our relationship to art in them more, I think.
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Off to Te Papa I traipsed, to see Senso, a movie saved from oblivion by the wonders of digital technology – and it did look beautiful. While the pacing of the story was a little slow, and everything that was going to happen was telegraphed well in advance, in some ways this worked to the film’s advantage: since you knew that so-and-so was a cad, watching the heroine slowly sink further and further into his clutches was agonizing, since you could see that there was no way for things to end well.
I enjoyed it, but I don’t think I’d need to see it again.
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Finally, I saw Cooking History. Unfortunately, I saw it at Te Papa as well – as I’ve noted before, seeing one film in those seats is fine, but seeing two tends to end up agonizing, and it’s hard to be drawn into the movie when your knees hurt.
That said – I really enjoyed the film, and the people it introduced you to; the Germans reminiscing about how good the bread was for soldiers during the war, the Russian woman who had made pancakes for aviators (and who talked about how the dinner for downed airmen was set aside until their death was confirmed, and then taken to the graveyard for them), and the Frenchmen talking about “monkey meat” (corned beef) in Algeria.
One of the most interesting places was former Czechoslovakia – they talked to Tito’s cook (who had to taste-test for poisons), and how even the meals served with the talks were nationalistic; and the Croatian army cook who had refused to become an instructor because he didn’t want to teach Serbs, and who complained that the army cookbook had used Serbian names for dishes, and said that he wouldn’t cook with a Serbian for the film “for all the money in the world”.
And the Russian at the beginning, talking about the lack of supplies in Chechnya, and how the more experienced soldiers stole from the new recruits… I had read elsewhere about how large parts of the Russian army functions more like prison gangs than soldiers, but I hadn’t realised how bad it was.
One of the Russian women who had come with the Soviet army, who were there to stomp on… the Hungarian revolt? The Czech one? I can’t remember… anyway, she said, “Life is not porridge; there are no easy recipes.”
Even though watching various animals being slaughtered (a cow, a pig and a rooster, if I recall correctly) was a bit gruesome, I would watch this again.
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