Had Lewis Carroll switched from jotting down his visions to carving them in stone, his works might have looked a lot like Antonio Gaudí’s. Both artists shared what Eric Rohmer once described (in a Cahiers du Cinéma review of a Frank Tashlin film) as “a rebellion against the straight line,” a quality amply displayed in Antonio Gaudí, Hiroshi Teshigahara’s meditative document about the great Spanish architect.
As Teshigahara’s camera travels through the streets of Barcelona, the majesty and sheer strangeness of Gaudí’s 19th-century combination of Art Nouveau arabesques and organic contours take over. The tour is centered on detailed views of the Casa Batlló and the Casa Milà, where ornate designs seem to alternately belong in a Kubrick film and in the Land of Oz, and on the Casa Vicens and Güell Palace, where medieval sumptuousness is skewed by twisty columns and undulating rooftops. Ditching talking heads in favor of Toru Takemitsu’s spellbinding score, Teshigahara cultivates an immersive tone as we float hypnotically from one architectural wonder to the next, from grisly murals to staircases that resemble a caterpillar’s segmented body.
The contrasting blends in Gaudí’s work (the ancient and the modern, the natural and the man-made) are reflected in shots of frosted glass on antique formations, and also of rocky hills that look like rugged visages. Visually ravishing and rhythmic, Antonio Gaudí feels like a well-made but impersonal travelogue until one recalls the Japanese filmmaker’s own use of nature’s unruly shapes in his classic Woman in the Dunes. Teshigahara’s refusal to provide extensive biographical or historical context to Gaudí’s structures won’t be of much help to art students cramming for a test, yet he understands how, when dealing with the maker of the monumental, unfinished La Sagrada Familia basilica, an artist’s life and times can be best summarized by letting the works speak for themselves.
Image/Sound
Criterion’s transfer of a high-def digital restoration offers significant improvements across the board from their 2008 DVD release. The magnificence of Antonio Gaudí’s art is often found in his extremely acute attention to details, so lovingly traced throughout Hiroshi Teshigahara’s tribute to one of his artistic heros. The high video bitrate used on Criterion’s Blu-ray lends the image a newfound sharpness, allowing for the fullest appreciation of Gaudí’s craftsmanship this side of a flight to Barcelona. The color balancing is equally impressive, presenting a vivid dynamic range of color and hues. As there’s no voiceover to speak of, Antonio Gaudí is a relatively quiet film, but the uncompressed monaural soundtrack gets the job done in the rare occurrences that Tôru Takemitsu’s typically off-kilter, ethereal score kicks into full gear.
Extras
The 72-minute Antonio Gaudí is indeed one of the shorter films to garner an individual release from Criterion, but the disc is packed with a nice variety of extras, albeit ones that are mostly ported over from the prior DVD release. Still, this is an astute batch of features that tackle Gaudí’s enduring legacy as well as Teshigahara’s long-running fascination with the Catalan architect’s work. An interview with Japanese architect Arata Isozaki offers insight into Japan’s ongoing fondness for Gaudí’s work, despite his free-flowing style being generally at odds with the straight lines and sharp angles that dominate Japanese architecture. In his hour-long documentary God’s Architect: Antoni Gaudí, art critic Robert Hughes takes great care to spotlight some of the architect’s less famous work, while not underestimating the importance of La Sagrada Familia as the final culmination of Gaudí’s artistic growth.
A pair of Teshigahara short films are also included: the silent Gaudí, Catalunya, 1959 documents Teshigahara’s first encounters with Gaudí’s work in Barcelona, while Sculptures by Sofu—Vita chronicles a gallery showing of the sculptures of his father, Sofu Teshigahara, whose fondness for Gaudi’s use of serpentine curves is evident in his own work. The package is rounded out with a beautiful 38-page booklet with a new essay by art historian Dore Ashton, a 1959 conversation among the Teshigaharas about their trip to Spain, and an anecdote by Hiroshi Teshigahara about his relationship with Gaudí’s work.
Overall
This side of a flight to Barcelona, Criterion’s gorgeous upgrade of Hiroshi Teshigahara’s tribute to Antonio Gaudí is the next best option to appreciate the Catalan architect’s work.
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