Interview: Frederick Wiseman on the Ephemeral Art of Menus-Plaisirs Les Troisgros

When it comes to nonfiction films that capture both institutional and interpersonal dynamics, the master is Frederick Wiseman. Since mid-20th-century advances in synchronized sound gave filmmakers greater freedom to capture events as they unfolded, Wiseman has used those tools to the fullest. His body of work speaks to both the breadth and depth of his interest in the contemporary human experience. Wiseman’s curiosity continues to know no bounds as he explores yet another new frontier with Menus-Plaisirs Les Troisgros, a look inside the operations of a Michelin-starred restaurant in central France.

As with all Wiseman works, the location isn’t the limit. His camera tracks all the different people and places needed to keep La Maison Troisgros such a culinary powerhouse. Wiseman’s stint observing the operations fortuitously overlaps with a period of introspection among the ownership as head chef Michel begins to contemplate passing the baton to his sons César and Léo. The food is just the entry point for four hours of rich details, which the filmmaker synthesizes across an expansive canvas to tell a grander story about families and ecosystems.

I caught up with Wiseman shortly after Menus-Plaisirs Les Troisgros played at the New York Film Festival. Our conversation covered how his latest documentary relates to frequent fascinations in his work, where he sees similarities to his performance-related documentaries, and why he decided on a “farm-to-table” narrative progression to tie the footage together.

In a past life, I did promotion for restaurants, and I found that one of the hardest parts of my job was making the food look good when you train a camera on it. Did you find any difficulties in filming the food on a practical level?

Les Troisgros were very concerned about the presentation, the way it looked on a plate. Usually either Michel or César inspected every plate before it was brought to the dining room. They were concerned about the shape and the color. They’re artists, and it’s an ephemeral work of art.

Do you see a connection between their artistry and your own? Coordinating the sensory experience?

I think the similarities are among all the forms. You have to try and find a form to give expression to your thought. That’s true whether you’re choreographer, filmmaker, or novelist. Issues of structure, point of view, characterization, passage of time, and abstractions exist no matter what you’re doing.

Did you see at all the connection between some of the performance-based documentaries you’ve done in the backstage of the kitchen and the front stage of serving the guests?

Yeah, there are similarities. I think Les Troisgros are involved the same issues that I’m involved in, or a painter is involved in, or a choreographer. Issues of structure, color, point of view, composition, except that it’s ephemeral. Like ballet’s ephemeral. No performance is the same. Even if it’s filmed, it’s not the same as it was on the stage.

The way in which you’re depicting the repetitive task of preparing the meals is different each time. How did you determine the way of showing that process?

Well, by shooting it so many different ways. It resembles the film I did about La Comédie Française [1996’s La Comédie-Française ou L’amour joué] or the ballet films in the sense that not only was it ephemeral, but I could shoot it because it was repetitive. Meaning both in rehearsal and performance. I could shoot it one way, look at the rushes, and then go back the next night or a few nights later and shoot it a different way. And then you just decide to use one of the nights or figure out ways of intercutting it, etcetera. That’s very different than what goes on when you do film set in a welfare center because it just happens once. Here, the menu wasn’t always the same, but they made a lot of kidneys, salmon, and brains. You could shoot it, look at it. And if I didn’t like it, or if I didn’t feel I had enough close-ups or wide shots, I [knew] I could go back and do it in the same way I could go back to ballet rehearsal or a performance.

Is that liberating as a filmmaker to know you have second chances?

Well, yeah, because in film about a welfare center, you either get it or you don’t!

Since you mentioned dance, did you find there was a choreography of the way that bodies are moving through the space in the kitchen?

Yes, because they move very fast and didn’t talk much. We had to stay out of their way. But their different activities were performed in different parts of the kitchen. There’s one sequence where Michel explains what happens at the various workstations in terms of preparation, cooking, and putting it on the plate. The tasks are assigned in advance; the staff knows them; they don’t need to talk very much. Michel at one point says to some of the visitors in the kitchen, “We don’t have to talk very much, everybody knows their job. Somebody can raise their eyebrows or point with a finger, and the others understand.”

The first time we really see them in the kitchen, they prepare the food mostly in the kind of silence that you talk about. The more we see it, the more we get the kitchen noise and the back and forth that goes on around the preparation of dishes. How did you come to build this progression?

It progresses because there’s a progression in the film of seeing them buying it, seeing them preparing it, then you see them cooking it, and then you see them serving it. It’s the obvious, natural progression. There’s less tension and hurriedness when they’re cutting up the fish or preparing a vegetable than when they’re trying to get the various components of the dish ready simultaneously.

When did that “farm-to-table,” for lack of a better word, journey start to emerge for you?

As I got into the editing, but it’s an obvious structure because it’s orderly. It does progress from the purchase through the cooking with some side trips to the farm, the vineyard, or the cheese factory.

Did you envision those excursions off to the side?

No, I didn’t even know about it until I started shooting. But it’s characteristic of all the films. By being present and talking to people, you find out. I was talking to Michel one day, and he said he was going to visit a place where they made goat cheese. So, I said, “Can I come?” And then I heard that the staff was going to visit much bigger cheese factory. “Can I come?” Similarly with the vineyard. By hanging around and talking to people, you get ideas. And then also, people come to you with ideas. Somebody came up to me to say, “We’re going to be at the market at seven o’clock tomorrow morning.”

Did making this film expand your idea of what food and restaurants are? It seems to me you’re making a film about the entire environment.

But I didn’t know I was going to do that before I started. What you see in the films is what I learned by being present.

You often talk about how your films are about resolving a tension between the literal and the abstract. Oftentimes, you see those echoes in the first and the last 10 minutes of the film. Is that something that you’d rather me ask more specific questions about, or something that you only talk about generally?

You’re right. I’m interested in the literal and the abstract. It’s not true in all the films that you see it at the beginning and the end, but it’s true in a lot of them. Because at the end of Menus-Plaisirs, there’s a long sequence in the dining room where Michel gives a lot of the history. But I think it’s true throughout the film.

There’s a bit of an echo between the art of what they do and the commerce, both that they begin at the market and end with Michel selling the dishes to the customers.

It’s a performance, and it’s a business.

You’ve also mentioned that you have a novelistic influence more than a journalistic influence. Do you see any echoes of those coming into play here?

Certainly, the whole structure of the film! I mean, I think it’s always true. Because if I was a journalist, I’d do “who,” “what,” “when,” and “where” in the first two minutes of the film. From my point of view, the structure of the film resembles more of the structure of a novel than it does a journalistic report.

Were there any works in particular that were comparable to what you ultimately found?

I don’t say there’s a one-to-one relationship, but when I read a novel or a poem, I pay attention to the structure. I’ve learned a lot about structure and how to present abstract ideas. There’s a difference between presenting abstract ideas and words and images. In thinking about how it’s done in words, I’ve learned more how to do it with pictures.

I can’t help but see a bit of a contrast between the architecture of the main structures in your last two films: the brutalist architecture of Boston’s City Hall and the open windows connecting humans with nature at La Maison Troisgros. How do you approach depicting physical spaces and how they impress themselves on human behavior?

It’s hard to make a judgment how it’s impressed on human behavior. But in shooting physical spaces, you try to find ways that accurately represent the way they look and, at the same time, are visually interesting.

When you talk about the editing process, oftentimes you say the goal is to create something “true to your own account of what happened.” Is the idea to recreate a time and a place with a little bit more impressionism rather than realism, capturing your own emotional response?

I don’t know what else it could be because I’m the one that’s making the choices. To me, it’s not an issue. Making one of these movies involves many thousands, or hundreds of thousands, of choices. I’m the one that’s making them.

We see a number of scenes playing out at extended duration, but there are also some sequences throughout that are designed to give glimpses of information. Maybe it’s surveying the scenery, or maybe it’s learning La Maison Troisgros is a Michelin-starred restaurant because you show the sign. How are you determining when to intercut these types of shots into the action?

It gets back to the literal/abstract again. I want a viewer to know it’s a Michelin-star restaurant. It’s a question of how to do it. The simplest way to do it was to show a picture of the Michelin stars inside. I’m on the lookout for that simple way to convey factual information.

Is the preference to do it visually rather than giving an exposition dump, for lack of a better term?

Well, it’s shorter that way! It depends what I find. I mean, I would have had someone talking about if I hadn’t had the sign. It depends what kind of choices I have, and the kind of choices I have are related to the kind of choices I make during the shooting. The kind of choices that I have in the editing are simply the sum of the choices I’ve made in the shooting.

How do you know when it’s time to stop shooting on a film like this? Whenever you kind of have the sense of how it’s going to end?

I never have any sense of how it’s going to end, if by “end” you mean how the film’s gonna end. No, that’s something I work out in the editing. But I look at rushes every night. I don’t always do that, but often do that. I have an idea of what’s there, and I make notes about it. During the shooting, I keep a notebook in my pocket about what I have and what I need to get. And then, suddenly, maybe it’s because I’m tired, or things begin to seem repetitive, or I want sleep in my own bed, you get a sense of when it’s over.

Is the notebook more for practical considerations?

It’s whatever I need to try and remember.

Are the themes emerging for you in the shooting?

No. Sometimes in a vague way, but the specific themes emerge in the editing.

For this project, you’ve said it’s not strictly chronological…

It’s not chronological at all! Well, it’s chronological in the sense that I don’t start with a shot of the cooked brain.

Do you remember when the last scene we see took place?

I don’t remember, but it wasn’t the last day I was there. There’s never any connection between the way a film begins or ends and my own experience. I can end the film with somebody shot in the first day or begin it with something shot in the last day. Once you get into the editing, it’s all material from which you need to construct something.

Especially at the end, the themes of past and the future are at play with Michel. I don’t know if you psychoanalyze the way that gravitate toward themes, but do you think you would have closed the film on that note decades ago?

I don’t know. The editing, as you know, is trying to think your way through the material. So, if I were doing it today, maybe my thoughts would be the same, maybe they’d be different.

Is there any mindset you bring to editing other than openness to reviewing the material and seeing what you have?

You have to think you understand what is going on in each sequence. Unless you understand what’s going on, and I’m not saying I’m always right, but I have to think that I understand what’s going on in the sequence to know, one, whether or not I want to use it; two, how I’m going to cut it down from its original form, which can be in some cases 10 times longer; three, how to edit it; and, four, where to place it in a structure. None of that is mechanical. It all involves trying to think. Editing one of these films is thinking about the human behavior that you have captured on film, its implications and consequences.

Does it get any easier over time?

Oh, it’s fun! I mean, I don’t find the editing a strain, I enjoy it. The shooting is more is physically demanding and is much more instinctive. But the editing is more contemplative and not at all physically demanding. Except, I suppose, sitting in the chairs.