Sketches of Frank Gehry

"Sketches of Frank Gehry" is director Sydney Pollack's first foray into documentary filmmaking, a personal quest to understand the work of his longtime friend, the Western world's most famous architect, Frank Gehry. Upon seeing Gehry's most famous work, the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, at its opening in 1997, Pollack asked himself, "Where did this come from?" A question in the minds of many who have been transfixed by the Bilbao's metallic curves that rise organically from the Earth while they ironically convey otherworldliness. Pollack approaches the film with a layman's understanding of architecture and an intense desire to understand why and how Frank Gehry creates as he does. Gehry is at ease with his friend and speaks freely of his background, his career, and his ambition. Pollack was apprehensive about placing himself in the film, but his presence personalizes the exercise and introduces a dialogue between these 2 men who both "try to find personal expressiveness within disciplines that make stringent commercial demands".

The greatest insight into Gehry's creative process and the evolution of his styles comes from Gehry himself. But clients, artists, writers, museum curators, Gehry's design partners, and his psychoanalyst Milton Wexler all contribute their perspectives on the man and his work. We see some works in progress and briefly tour some of Gehry's buildings: private residences, museums, and commercial buildings. The only Frank Gehry detractor who agreed to participate in the film is Hal Foster, Princeton University Professor of Art & Architecture. I would have liked to hear more dissenting opinion -or more balanced opinion- since the praise of Gehry's work becomes repetitive. Foster articulates only some of Gehry's weaknesses. Frank Gehry works very well with light, and his best buildings have lines that are utterly symphonic. But he has persistent aesthetic and practical shortcomings. In any case, "Sketches of Frank Gehry" is an inviting, insightful documentary that gives an impression of transparency, to match Gehry's buildings.

The DVD (Sony Pictures 2006): There is a "Q&A with Sydney Pollack" (34 min) from the Los Angeles premiere of the film. Pollack discusses how he approached the subject of Frank Gehry's work, being neither a documentarian or an architecture buff, but a layperson trying to understand the mind behind the buildings. He talks about the process of making the film and his intention to make a documentary that relates in style to traditional documentaries as Gehry's architecture relates to traditional architecture. And he takes some questions from the audience. Subtitles for the film are available in French.

Ironically Sydney Pollack's warm, intelligent portrait of his longtime friend, architect Frank Gehry, is probably the best film he's made in years. Casually recording Gehry at work and while driving, and outside the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles while it is still under construction, Pollack has made an intimate documentary of an architect who over the years has revolutionized how we see buildings, steadily redefining our relationship between space and light.

From the outset it becomes pretty obvious that Gehry has never let professional limitations get to him and he's notoriously rejected much of the artistic conservatism of the past. Consequently, he's created architectural designs that just don't conform to the normal, predictable rules of geometry.

Obviously whether you like his work is a matter of taste - I find a lot of his work rather cold and ugly - but it is absolutely fascinating to watch his metamorphosis take place, from the design stage, where his ideas originate as doodles on paper and assemblages of cardboard and tape, to their transformation into models and then the finished product.

Of course the final test comes when they are molded into glass and titanium, and we finally get to see the end result of Gehry's vision. At barely ninety minutes, Pollack seems intent to cram a lot into his film: We get interviews with patrons, admirers and friends, including Bob Geldoff, the former Disney executives Michael D. Eisner and Michael S. Ovitz the Guggenheim chief Thomas Krens and Herbert Muschamp, the former architecture critic of The New York Times.

Perhaps most interesting are the graphic shorts of Gehry's most crowning achievements. Along with the Walt Disney Concert Hall, there's the Disney Ice rink in Anaheim and of course, the Guggenheim Museum of Bilbao that towers majestically above the city.

Not all critics are favorable; Pollack also interviews Hal Foster, an art critic and Princeton professor, who is far more critical of Mr. Gehry's reputation, and of the kind of "cultural branding," and the propensity towards architectural trendiness that his fame represents. But Gehry is always affable if not a little bit crusty and is more than willing to listen and take note of his potential detractors.

This movie, for the most part does a good job of balancing exploration of his personality with admiration of his work. As expected, it's Gehry who is probably the most frank and harshly candid observer of his work. And he even admits that it takes him at least a year to let go of a lot of his work once it is finished.

In the end, what we get is a fascinating portrait of a visual genius, a hardworking and refreshingly unpretentious man who has devoted his life to obtaining creative freedom through is work. Mike Leonard September 06.

Even though I have since seen the Experience Music Project in Seattle and the Pritzker Pavilion in Chicago, I was first taken by Frank Gehry's work when I accidentally came upon the eye-catching "Fred and Ginger" building in Prague in 1999, an eccentric juxtaposition of a cylindrical concrete building and a free-flowing glass tower that does indeed look like the classic dancing pair. Director Sydney Pollack has taken time out of his commercial filmmaking to make a mostly winning documentary about his close friend, the world-renowned architect. It's a warm and low-key look at Gehry's creative process which obviously parallels Pollack's own. In fact, the film is structured as an intimate conversation between the two and the joy of the film comes from the unexpected revelations that only happen between friends, in particular, how Gehry broke with tradition at an early age to design wildly original buildings that people either abhor or revere.

With a relative minimum of his own narcissism, Pollack is able to convey Gehry as a curious mix of self-effacing outsider and proud non-conformist and uses not only Gehry's own musings but the perspectives of others to provide evidence of both sides of the man. Not too surprisingly, Gehry's long-time therapist Milton Wexler provides the most perceptive comments about his patient's internal creative struggles, but there are also insightful remarks from Gehry's colleague, the late Philip Johnson; Herbert Muschamp of the New York Times; and architecture critic Hal Foster, the only one to offer a dissenting view of Gehry's work.

Unfortunately, in an attempt to broaden the audience for his film, Pollack has also included several celebrities, whose opinions about Gehry border on the banal, for example, film industry heavyweights Michael Ovitz, Michael Eisner and Barry Diller; Dennis Hopper who lives in a Gehry-designed house; and Bob Geldof who just happened upon the Gehry-designed Vitra Design Museum while on tour. Director Julian Schnabel provides some funny moments as he shows up in a bathrobe, sunglasses and with a brandy snifter, especially as he talks about the audacity of Gehry's work and makes a classic analogy with Robert Duvall's performance in "Apocalypse Now".

However, the best moments are Gehry at work with his design partners Craig Webb and Edwin Chan, as they innocently start designs with construction paper and a pair of scissors. Pollack's cinematic skills come into play when he showcases the designs of Gehry's most famous buildings, the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, the Walt Disney Concert Hall in LA and the DG Bank Building in Berlin. With long takes and compositions set against adjacent buildings, we can appreciate what Gehry was trying to achieve in making his designs compatible with the environs. Instead of the montage provided in the film, a more comprehensive and annotated image catalogue of his work would have been more helpful in order to understand the changes in Gehry's designs as his career progressed. Other than previews for several recent documentaries, the only extra on the 2006 DVD is an illuminating half-hour Q&A session with Pollack moderated by director Alexander Payne.

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