Seeing this movie on a whim, not knowing what it was about, only reading a review appearing in the "New York Sun," I really didn't know what to expect.
I saw the words "opera" and "art" and "new aesthete" in the review--words that usually accompany reviews about documentaries about art about life. But what got me to buy my ticket was the description that "music is color." And for David Hockney, it's just that. Driving across America--along the mountains of central California, along the edges of Utah deserts and the Grand Canyon--David plays opera music in his car, with his beloved dogs in the backseat. When he hears the music, instead of seeing scenes and images, he sees colors first.
I guess that's why we're given several transitory shots of long drives--a camera taking us around curves on a mountain road in the same sense that panoramic theatres at museums take us on a roller-coaster or around the stars.
This film has striking, beautiful imagery. It has a soundtrack of Wagner, Mozart, Straus. Although it's choppy and tells us little about Hockney other than how he builds sets and that, despite his lust for music he is going deaf, we nonetheless get a glimpse of the passion and unbelievably intricate work that goes into creating an opera.
See this; if only to remind your eyes how colors can make them feel.
