The Gates

Albert Maysles & Antonio Ferrera – 2007 – USA

The great – (and recently deceased) – documentarian Albert Maysles made several films about the landscape artist Christo going back to the 70s.  See Running Fence (1978) and Umbrellas (1994), among others.  It was an association that was fruitful for both parties; their familiarity with each other removing the difficulty a filmmaker has in lowering his subjects’ defenses, and Maysles’ reputation guaranteeing Christo respectable exposure.  As in Clouzot’s The Mystery of Picasso (1956), we see in these films how not only the process of an art work’s creation but the means of the process’s documentation can also be works of art.  Here, Christo and his longtime partner Jeanne-Claude maneuver through the financial, legal and political red tape in New York City as they attempt to install a project long in the making; a series of orange curtains hanging from posts running through a section of Central Park.  The film is a potent expose about the eternal war between artists and bureaucrats, for it is civic leaders and city officials who kept the project at bay for decades, unwilling to allow the park and its patrons to be inconvenienced for a mere two weeks for rear of a backlash of complaints.  We see council-members and average citizens alike complaining about the project even though Christo himself is financing it alone; when told that the taxpayers won’t lose a dime, the critics still object on the basis of not liking that so much money is to be wasted on something so frivolous.  Some argue that Christo’s installation is a needless intrusion on the natural beauty of the park, but Christo reminds them that the park itself is man-made, an artificial oasis in the middle of an asphalt jungle.  When the Gates are finally unveiled, everyone seems delighted, even if they don’t find any special meaning in the piece, and we see that true artists are driven to make beautiful things for the people whether they are welcome or not.