Antonio Gaudí: The Criterion Collection

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According to British art critic Robert Hughes, "Barcelona without (Antonio) Gaudí is unthinkable like a peacock with a bald back side." Gaudí (1852-1926) was a Catalan architect whose bright, colorful designs appear to contain no straight lines whatsoever; the man never met a parabolic curve he didn´t like. Gaudí´s building are nearly as idiosyncratic as the man himself; an intensely pious, celibate work-a-holic, Gaudí lived his life and his faith through his architecture. Gaudí´s monastic lifestyle contrasts so sharply with his sinuous, seductive forms that he has become an unlikely, enigmatic hero for many artists, including the Surrealists who embraced (and appropriated) Gaudí´s work into their movement.

You won´t learn any of this from watching Hiroshi Teshigahara´s equally enigmatic and seductive tone poem "Antonio Gaudí" (1984), a nearly wordless contemplation of the shapes and spaces that comprise Gaudí´s legacy to Barcelona and to the world. Hiroshi´s film doles out its information so sparely that, if you didn´t recognize the building´s being shown, the only indication that the film is about Gaudí comes from the title.

In one of many canny moves, Hiroshi does not begin the film with any of Gaudí´s work. Rather he orients the viewer to the city of Barcelona; people gather around a luminous fountain at night, we amble through empty back alleyways. Then the film makes an abrupt transition from the sights and sounds of a cheerful dance in the streets to a close-up of a depiction of Christ accompanied by a sepulchral organ. Hiroshi dives right into the very soul of the deeply devout architect, lingering on a series of close-ups of gruesome religious artworks before finally showing us our first exterior shot of one of Gaudí´s buildings.

The jarring contrasts in both image and sound place "Antonio Gaudí" firmly in the realm of what filmmaker Nathaniel Dorsky calls "devotional cinema." As Dorsky uses the term devotion doesn´t refer directly to a religious experience but rather "it is the opening or the interruption that allows us to experience what is hidden." The cut between the rowdy dancers and the somber Christ figure is one of many such "devotional" moments in this film. Hiroshi´s confident manipulation of time further emphasizes this sense of presence. Gaudí´s buildings defy the concept of linear time. They exist in a modern Barcelona and were built over a century ago, yet they belong to neither era. Though Gaudí was influenced by the Art Nouveau movement of his time, his work was unique both then and now; Gaudí produced no "school" of architecture. He certainly had no influence whatsoever on 20th century architecture with its sleek lines and cool tones. Gaudí bears at least a passing resemblance to 16th century composer Carlo Gesualdo, who pioneered an experimental chromatic style that placed him at least three centuries ahead of his time (fortunately, Gaudí´s personal life bore no resemblance to Gesualdo´s.)

Hiroshi also escapes the trap that many architecture documentaries fall into. Though the camera lingers on many buildings and details, the film also opens up to show the people who live and move through the spaces designed by Gaudí. One of the film´s best sequences takes place in the Park Güell, a bright airy space marked by Gaudí´s colorful mosaics; today it serves as a common space used by thousands of Barcelonans. The film closes, like Gaudí´s career, with the expansive Sagrada Familia chapel, the crowning achievement of Gaudí´s career which remained unfinished for decades after his death.

Though labeled a documentary, "Antonio Gaudí" is more of a piece with other devotional films such as "The Passion of Joan or Arc," "La Notte," "Days of Heaven" or the avant-garde work of Stan Brakhage, Bruce Conner, and Jem Cohen. The latter comparison is no coincidence since Hiroshi and his artist father Sofu were deeply involved in the avant-garde community both in Japan and abroad.

"Antonio Gaudí" is such a beautiful film, it´s almost a crime to watch it in a digitally compressed format, no matter how good the Criterion transfer might be. Dorsky also notes that one aspect of devotional cinema is the way that it´s viewed, or rather was viewed in an era not so long ago: in the darkness of the theater/cave on a large illuminated screen. Today, viewed in a living room with the lights on, the phone ringing and a myriad of other familial and multi-media distractions, the devotional film loses some its transformative power. Of course, you can always put the kids to bed, unplug the phone and turn off the lights, but it´s still not quite the same.

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