A magical, one-of-a-kind movie--a near-wordless 1984 tribute by the late Japanese director Hiroshi Teshigahara to the 19th-century Catalan architect Antonio Gaudi, whose ingenious, sensual designs grace the city of Barcelona. To call Gaudi's designs unique is to belittle them: His buildings borrow organic shapes from nature--the whorl of a seashell, the gnarled rigidity of a tree trunk--to create free-flowing forms of almost surreal beauty. Teshigahara's camera prowls the streets of Barcelona seeking the buildings, then lavishing attention on their alien curves, vaulted ceilings, and bizarre portals. The movie sounds dry, but the buildings are so fanciful and voluptuous that you can scarcely believe your eyes: They erupt from the city like weeds through a sidewalk, and their entropic strangeness becomes hypnotic. The director delights in watching people interact with these forms, as when a little girl roller-skates placidly through a forest of vertical columns. In his WOMAN IN THE DUNES, Teshigahara made moonscapes of sand and glistening crystals, immersing us in their texture; here he shows a similar fascination with everyday forms made shockingly unfamiliar. And his frequent collaborator, the great composer Toru Takemitsu, fashioned Catalan folk tunes into a haunting score that's at once ancient and futuristic, just like Gaudi's designs. A must-see for architects, for anyone intrigued by the possibilities of public art--and for anyone who wants to be transported to another world for an hour.
