Antonio Gaudi

Director: Hiroshi Teshigahara
Studio: Image Entertainment
Product Type: DVD

Amazon.com

Creator of one of the most bizarre and organic styles in the history of architecture, Antonio Gaudi Cornet, Spain's national treasure, was blessed with not only the vision, but the patronage that allowed him to build his elaborate and surreal designs. With Antonio Gaudi, Japanese director Hiroshi Teshigahara (Woman in the Dunes) gives a tour of the makings of Gaudi's world. Almost entirely without narration, Teshigahara guides us instead with an eerie score by Toru Takemitsu and a few subtitles. The film is more a poem than a documentary, but don't expect an approach similar to Godfrey Reggio's Koyaanisqatsi. Instead we are given a quiet soundtrack that mixes Takemitsu's sparse score with the natural sounds surrounding Gaudi's structures, and a stationary camera presents the buildings as if they have sprouted: supports seem to magically erupt from the ground like roots, and our eyes are led through the textures and patterns of Gaudi's elaborate mosaic stone and brick designs. Visually revealing and comprehensive, Teshigahara leaves us with only one thing to do--to view Gaudi's amazing world with our own eyes. --Ted Sonnenschein

Description

A spellbinding visual journey through the enchanted world of the great Spanish architect whose work influenced Picasso, Miro and Dali. A mind-blowing sensory experience like "Koyaanisqatsi," this film follows every curve of Gaudi's colorful, organic--and sometimes even erotic--architecture. Like "The Mystery of Picasso," Academy Award-nominated director Hiroshi Teshigahara (Woman in the Dunes) captures the grand scope of the artist's creative genius. The haunting score by Toru Takemitsu helps bring the fantastical visions of this architectural celebrity to life.

Customer Reviews:

An Antti Keisala Comment: The Book of Nature.......2007-02-05

Oh my, what expectations I had regarding this film: Teshigahara has impressed me as much as one just can, his `Woman in the Dunes' (Suna no onna, 1984) ranking as one of the all-time greats in my books. He is a towering figure in cinema, and to think that it was only one of his ventures (you might know that he dedicated most of his life, as had his family before him, to a very special kind of japanese flower-arranging, ikeban). Architecture, apparently, was another.

I don't claim any qualification in the field of architecture, but as someone who cherishes space and those who directly refer to it (or its absence) in cinematic worlds, Gaudí can't be far behind. The buildings are so vividly spatial they not only interact with the surrounding space, the interiors themselves are in a word divine.

You might be a dreamer, much in the same vein as I am. Then you might have had infatuations, be it for real persons or places or simple images, moods that pass through you, triggered by certain moments and feelings. Perhaps you might have had an infatuation for a girl, someone you know by only a limited context; much in the same way passing by in the street as the girl in Rohmer's `The Bakery Girl of Monceau', you don't know her, and you only cherish the impression of her, wishing to know her, filling the void left by the lack of knowledge with your own ideals and fantasy. That is, you half invent a person. Then, in a sudden, you get the chance to meet her. And you might feel terrified, knowing that you would be faced with reality that is outside of your own imagination, not within the fantasies and archetypes of your mind. I know would be. And I know I would take the risk of being disappointed, because that is how our heart works most of the time.

I was pretty much in this same situation with this film. As I've noted, Teshigahara is to me an important abstractionist on a very personal level, and Gaudí is even more so. So there I was, like a young boy, afraid to meet the possible love of my life, merely because I knew that there was the distinct possibility of not falling in love.

So did I?

Now, forget about the rather horrifying transfer available (or unavailable, depending on which format you're looking for) and set your eyes upon the film itself, no matter how much the quality of the transfer tries to distract you from what's going on. The film is both gorgeous and disappointing. It is gorgeous in how Teshigahara defines space, perhaps the most beautiful space ever known to man. He doesn't simply stick to the postcard images of exteriors, which by themselves alone are breathtakingly vivacious in how they interact with their surroundings, but he takes the camera, our eye, inside and that is where the real magic lies, as well as the only disappointing thing I can find from the film.

Teshigahara doesn't move the camera much, which in itself is appropriate in places, but also misses in my mind the greatest cinematic adventures in space possible: we move scarcely inside the buildings, only note the astonishing plunges into space by the structures, the walls, the strange shapes. He does take us on a ride like this occasionally, for an example when entering a building through the main entrance doors. This is so close to a Tarkovskian eye, a meditative, languorous eye that swims in the space that it's a shame, especially at a post-Tarkovskian as well as post-Pixarian time, that he didn't do it more excessively then. For in this case we have a master abstractionist understanding another. There are plunges, and for those I'm grateful, and they're done in an appropriately meditative manner. Also, I could've done without the dance bits. I guess I'm just a bit too hip about the whole thing nowadays.

All in all, this is a ravishing film, which I recommend you watch not only as an admirer of architecture for how well you can get into Gaudí's architecture, but also as a cinematic explorer of space because how well you can grasp the basic things about dimension through this film, as well as the abstractions of perception. Better teachers than this are scarce. Highly recommended.

With best regards, AK

Amazing & out of print, get it while you can.......2006-11-17

This 1984 documentary about the architect essentially lets Gaudi's work speak for itself, and it couldn't be more eloquent. The cinematography by Junichi Segawa, Yoshikazu Yanagida, and Ryu Segawa provides perspectives you couldn't get on-site in Barcelona, guiding you at a perfect pace through intimate interiors or whisking you to aerial vantage points, alternating between minute details and comprehensive views. The often gently moving camera and the lyrical editing unobtrusively yet decisively shape what you see. The acutely perceptive sound track doesn't have to compete with continual voice-over--much of the historical information is provided in on-screen titles that barely disrupt the enveloping beauty of the images.

Unfortunately, this amazing film is out of print. I haven't been able to find any copies of the DVD edition anywhere on the web or by calling distributors - I believe the 2 or 3 copies of the VHS edition for sale here on Amazon are the only copies of this movie for sale on the web. Get them while you still can - according to Image Entertainment, there are no plans to reissue this film.

Sound and image.......2006-02-27

For those used to the more linear approach to documentaries seen in American and European docs, this 1984 film will come as either a revelation or a bore (see one of the below reviews). But the director, Hiroshi Teshigahara--who had previously made several films with the composer Toru Takemitsu (all based on the writing of Kobo Abe)--here takes an unusual approach to the documentary, almost completely eschewing voiceover or any linear narrative perspective to instead immerse the viewer in the brilliance that was Antonio Gaudi.

Some people know Gaudi was the architect who designed and built highly original cathedrals (principally the Sagrada Familia) and other buildings in Barcelona. But what they may not know is that he was also a ceramics artist and a sculptor. Teshigahara lovingly and meticulously guides and glides us through the surreal archiect's work, comprising not only the aforementioned structures, but also buttresses, apartment building exteriors and interiors both, gates, ceilings, and all manner of unusual and strikingly organic shapes--a group of stone columns uncannily resembles a clump of trees--that amaze the viewer.

All the while, Takemitsu's music provides a unique complement to these startling visual images, often juxtaposing stark experimental sequences with their opposite--rigidly formal church music. The contrast of the two is an intriguing mix and a perfect match to what we are seeing. Gaudi was strongly religious, yat at the same time boldly innovative in his designs. Nowhere else on earth will anyone ever see buildings and structures like they will in Barcelona.

Near the end of the film, a Japanese narrator translates Spanish into Japanese--the Spanish is that of a student of Gaudi's; meanwhile, English subtitles appear at the bottom of the screen. The student speaks of his teacher, and that is the only "text" we are privy to in learning something about him. But it is very short, and soon after, the film ends. Teshigahara means, of course, for Gaudi's work to speak for itself, but he is also, I think, saying that there is something more to these breathtaking forms than just the sensuous pleasure of seeing them. There is, we could likely say, a mystical sense of what Gaudi was trying to do...

Highly recommended. Nothing else like this documentary anywhere. Unfortunately as of this writing, February 2006, the DVD is out of print.

Beautifully captured images of Gaudi's work........2002-11-12

When I first saw this film, I did not know what to expect. One thing is there is no dialogue, just footage of the glorious city of Barcelona and the effect Gaudi's work had on the place. It's beautiful, surreal and an extremely awe inspiring experience to view it all on film. There is a depth to this film which words cannot convey, only seeing this film can one appreciate Gaudi and the city of Barcelona. A city imbued with enormous beauty and creative genius. One can feel great pride for the Catalan people by just his (Gaudi's) example alone. Well worth your time to see!

A boring bore and even more of the same!.......2001-12-01

Oh, boy! This is an interesting but unfortunately FAILED experiment. This long pseudo-artsy "documentary" provides nothing more than a series of shots of Gaudí's buildings presented with an annoying electronic background music which sounds like it belongs in a cheap thriller. There is NO commentary, although buildings are labelled at times. Judging by cars in the streets, it's a rather old material. Most of my students in a Spanish art class were either annoyed, bored, or fell asleep during the viewing of this material. On the positive side, the DVD format lets one access just one building at a time -- in small doses it may be more palatable.

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