La Danse - Le Ballet de l'Opera de Paris (Saturday, November 2, 2009) (176)

Frederick Wiseman has made a career of very interesting documentaries with a clinical, dispassionate style. In this film he spends a few months with the Paris Opera Ballet company showing an 'all-access' look at the troupe's creative and administrative process. This is a long film, to be sure - 160 minutes long - but it does not drag much and keeps our interest throughout pretty well.

Wiseman's style is consists of setting a camera in a room and recording what goes on in front of it. There is no commentary and no particular 'director's voice'. It is documentary filmmaking in the Maysles model. It is as pure a document as one can imagine.

Much of the film shows the dancers rehearsing their routines with their choreographers and creative directors. We see at least six different numbers (maybe more - I might have lost track of a few of them) from their early stages through their final productions on stage. The rehearsal spaces, in the cupola of the old neo-Baroque Paris Opera theater, are themselves something wonderful to behold. But more than that, it is fascinating to see how the choreographers work on the most subtle movements of the dancers to change the entire tone of a work.

In addition to the artistic side, we also see the business and management side of things. We see Brigitte Lefèvre, the creative director and force of nature that has her hand in every part of the company from casting to fundraising. She's a tough lady, but clearly brilliant and totally respected by everyone we see (of course they have to respect her on camera because they would be cut if they didn't). In one scene, we see the development committee talking about an event for the 'American Friends' of the ballet, organizing events for the $5,000 and $25,000 donations. (Unintentional laughs result from a comment about Lehman Brothers executives giving money. Ooops!)

Wiseman gives us a glimpse of almost every small part of the production and every small support department. We see a guy vacuuming the boxes and cleaning the aisles of the orchestra, we see the costume designers working on upcoming shows, we see the cafeteria where administrators and dancers eat lunch side by side, we see the union labor discussions. It's all rather fascinating.

What I find especially interesting is the fact that this movie, which really has no particular 'point-of-view' and no directorial 'voice', feels rather strange because of it's nonchalance. That is to say that the film works as a mirror on the current documentary films and how nearly everything I have seen recently has a specific slant - and much of it being outright polemic. When faced with a film like this one, the *unbiased*, document-ness of it feels rather uncomfortable. Am I that corrupted by contemporary directors and their opinions?

For me, this is as much a formal exploration as it is a cinematic experience. The film is basically one scene after another with very little (other than some general chronology) linking one moment to the next. I think one of my frustrations with it is that ends rather abruptly - but it would be impossible to know how else to end it, I guess. It is as if the film is counting upwards with scenes - 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, etc. - moving easily from one thing to another. That it ends, say, on 25, rather than 20, is totally fair.

It does bring to my mind similar frustrations I had with Christo's mega-installation The Gates in 2005. That was also a formal exercise, I think. It's scope was breathtaking, but it's execution was sometimes mysterious and hard for me to follow. I had trouble with the fact that the individual gates were different in size and strangely varied different in distance from one to the next. This might have been part of a greater scheme, but to me, it felt too random and unfulfilling.

I get the same general feeling from this film. I recognize it as a beautiful work of art, but there are some editing and pacing decisions that don't totally make sense. But they don't make sense on a more fundamental level than a spot level. That is, I think there might be a big design that Wiseman has for the structure of the picture, but I can't see it and don't know what it is. I can say that I want to know more about the precess and the thinking behind the film - and hope there's more to learn.

I think this is a very beautiful and interesting movie. It might be a bit too long for casual viewing, but it probably is not a film that should be casually viewed. It is might be a bit too serious - but that's the point, I guess. (Like saying a war movie is too bloody or too violent.)

Stars: 2.5 of 4