For those unschooled in
the work of Antonio Gaudí—the radical Catalan architect responsible for
the Sagrada Familia cathedral in Barcelona, among other beguiling
masterworks—Hiroshi Teshigahara's 1984 documentary will offer little
context. So the best place to start on the new two-disc DVD is with the
supplemental materials, specifically the an hourlong BBC special Visions Of
Space: "God's
Architect," which clarifies Gaudí's
connection with nature and the sensual structures (flowers, tree bark, spider webs,
mountain faces) that influenced his spectacularly ornate designs. With that
knowledge in hand, Teshigahara's almost entirely wordless tribute to Gaudí's
achievements becomes a place to get lost, a hypnotic travelogue that's radical
in a way that's completely symbiotic with its subject. Though Gaudí died nearly
six decades before the film was made, it nonetheless feels like a true
collaboration between him and Teshigahara, whose camera caresses the Seussian
curves and painstaking flourishes that made Gaudi's work so otherworldly.
The son of a sculptor,
Teshigahara visited Spain in 1959 and shot some 16mm footage of Gaudi's
structures (20 minutes of which is included on the DVD), and though he didn't return
until the tail end of his career, the visit clearly had a profound effect on
him stylistically. Teshigahara's most famous film, 1964's Woman In The Dunes, converts the Gaudí-esque
desert landscapes into the film's most imposing character, as mysterious and
seductive as the woman who ensnares the hero in her underground lair. That's
why it really isn't adequate to call Antonio Gaudí a documentary, because
Teshigahara doesn't seek to inform, so much as find a poetic intersection
between his work and Gaudí's.
Except for a little
scholarly context on the towering Sagrada Familia, which Teshigahara saves for
the final 20 minutes, Antonio Gaudí keeps a cool distance and lets the work speak for
itself. Helped along by a musical score that fuses classical strains with the
eerie, chime-heavy ambiance of a science-fiction movie, the film draws out the
alien texture of Gaudí's façades, which sought no continuity with the
architecture surrounding them. He seemed to design buildings for another
world—one far more whimsical than our own.
Key features: In addition to the material already
mentioned, the supplemental disc includes a dull Ken Russell-directed tribute,
an interview with architect Arata Isozaki that links Gaudí and Teshigahara, and
Teshigahara's short film about his father.