Sketches of Frank Gehry
Director: Sydney Pollack
Year Released: 2005
Rating: 2.5
Pollack interviews and investigates the work of his friend, the Canadian-American architect Frank Gehry, showing him at work in his office in California on new projects and taking a glance at the older ones, most notably his Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain. Though hardly the most critical documentary - the one dissident, Princeton's Hal Foster, isn't given enough screen time to build a strong argument against the man - the picture's strength is Pollack's naivety - which he wears on his sleeve (within the first five minutes he admits he doesn't know much about architecture) - so what remains is really just a curious dialogue between two pals who are involved in the arts. I'm probably overrating this because of my own personal interest in the subject - people that (a.) don't want to see Gehry inflated to gigantic proportions and (b.) want an investigative look at the inner mechanics of designing buildings should probably steer clear.
