National Gallery movie review (2015) | Little White Lies

Nation­al Gallery

09 Jan 2015 / Released: 09 Jan 2015

Words by Mark Asch

Directed by Frederick Wiseman

Starring N/A

Two large oil paintings in ornate golden frames hang on the wall. The painting on the left depicts several female figures, while the one on the right shows a central nude figure surrounded by other nude figures.
Two large oil paintings in ornate golden frames hang on the wall. The painting on the left depicts several female figures, while the one on the right shows a central nude figure surrounded by other nude figures.
4

Anticipation.

No Wiseman film is less than fascinating, but will art appreciation be a waste of his talents?

5

Enjoyment.

Three hours is hardly a long time to spend in the presence of great art.

5

In Retrospect.

Wiseman shows us the “how” of art appreciation, from politics to philosophy, in a film vast in scope, and richly suggestive in insight.

One of cinema’s Old Mas­ters returns with this poet­ic and pro­found dis­sec­tion of art and storytelling.

The same shot pat­tern recurs, like a refrain, through­out the near­ly three hours of Fred­er­ick Wiseman’s Nation­al Gallery. It’s a sim­ple shot-reverse shot, begin­ning with a muse­um­go­er in close-up, eyes direct­ed off­screen, fol­lowed by a cut to a frame-fill­ing close-up of a paint­ing, and a cut back to a dif­fer­ent view­er – and on it goes.

Like an ear­ly, play­ful exper­i­ment with con­ti­nu­ity edit­ing, the cuts stitch togeth­er observ­er and pur­port­ed observee, and the loop stays open as Wise­man hop­scotch­es back and forth from Ital­ian Renais­sance scenes and Hans Holbein’s court paint­ings, to stu­dents with sketch­books and seniors with audio guides. It’s a demo­c­ra­t­ic array of faces lean­ing in clos­er, shift­ing their weight, smil­ing know­ing­ly, whis­per­ing kiss­i­ly in their companion’s ear – a poten­tial­ly inex­haustible recom­bi­na­tion of con­tem­pla­tor and contemplated.

For his 41st fea­ture film, the doc­u­men­tary god­head has bent his obser­va­tion­al, open-end­ed style to an espe­cial­ly well-suit­ed sub­ject. As always, there is no onscreen iden­ti­fy­ing text, no talk­ing heads or voiceovers, just vérité-style footage filmed by a small crew: What He Sees Is What You Get. But what Wise­man sees, in this case, is many peo­ple who are dif­fer­ent­ly, effu­sive­ly adept at inter­act­ing with art. It’s a plea­sure to lis­ten to the museum’s docents tai­lor their spiels – his­tor­i­cal scene-set­ting for adult tours, analo­gies to oth­er arts for school groups, sto­ries for kids, with detail pro­vid­ed in illus­tra­tive cutaways.

He is unlike his col­leagues in that he does show all stra­ta of soci­ety,” the leader of an art appre­ci­a­tion work­shop for the blind says of Pis­sar­ro, just before a cut – hard­ly the only time Wise­man empha­sis­es a com­ment equal­ly applic­a­ble to his own cin­e­ma. Though view­ers accli­mat­ed to direct-address in doc­u­men­taries may find his style ini­tial­ly dis­ori­ent­ing, Wise­man, in his role as edi­tor, asserts his author­ship of the footage he accu­mu­lates. From a bud­get meet­ing in which muse­um admin­is­tra­tors dis­cuss tight­ened spend­ing lim­its and staff redun­dan­cies, we get a smash cut to a lec­tur­er pre­sent­ing a slide of one of Turner’s Carthage paint­ings: Here is The Decline of the Empire’.

A major focus through­out Wiseman’s career has been the every­day inter­ac­tions on which social insti­tu­tions run, and giv­en the unadorned puri­ty of his raw mate­r­i­al, there is an acute dual­i­ty in his films which are both spe­cif­ic inter­ven­tions into con­tem­po­rary debates and near-abstract stud­ies. So muse­um direc­tor Nicholas Penny’s schol­ar­ly, slight­ly pained pres­ence in mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy ses­sions speaks to the prag­mat­ics bare­ly behind the cur­tain at any large cul­tur­al organ­i­sa­tion, in a way that’s of a piece with the oeu­vre of the Amer­i­can direc­tor of High School, Hos­pi­tal, Zoo, et al.

But this is also sure­ly a more direct engage­ment with the pol­i­tics of arts fund­ing and the role of pub­lic and pri­vate mon­ey in Cameron’s Britain; the scene of Pen­ny per­son­al­ly con­duct­ing a pri­vate tour of his prized acqui­si­tion, Diana and Actaeon,’ for a donor may pro­vide some insight into his deci­sion to step down, announced the month after Nation­al Gallery’s Cannes première.

But while this is impor­tant to acknowl­edge, it’s obvi­ous that Wiseman’s films, with their mono­lith­ic titles, are built to out­last any spe­cif­ic res­o­nance – though this is true of Nation­al Gallery in a dif­fer­ent way than of 1969’s Law and Order, say, with its axiomat­ic urban beat cops. When art restor­er Lar­ry Kei­th talks engross­ing­ly about var­nish­es, degrad­ing mate­ri­als and ambigu­ous inten­tion, it’s pos­si­ble to for­get, for sev­er­al min­utes at a time, that the object in the cor­ner of the frame, over which he brush­es his fin­gers so casu­al­ly, is Velázquez’s Christ in the House of Martha and Mary.’ The can­vas isn’t periph­er­al – we are. As Kei­th goes on to say, a prin­ci­pal guid­ing his life’s work is that any­thing he does, future gen­er­a­tions should be able to reverse in 15 min­utes if it turns out they know bet­ter than we did how the paint­ing should be preserved.

Increas­ing­ly in Wiseman’s arrange­ment of the mate­r­i­al, docents are heard to remark on a painting’s mys­tery or change­abil­i­ty, and indeed the grand diver­si­ty of per­spec­tive in Nation­al Gallery – all those peo­ple, all those gazes – becomes a com­men­tary on art’s infini­tude. The film’s final min­utes spi­ral out­ward into wings of the muse­um pre­vi­ous­ly bare­ly glimpsed, detour­ing to take in poet­ry and dance per­for­mances inspired by paint­ings we’ve already exam­ined from mul­ti­ple angles, before end­ing in a sequence of por­traits, cul­mi­nat­ing with Rembrandt’s Self Por­trait at the Age of 63’, the Old Mas­ter return­ing our gaze and involv­ing artist, art­work and audi­ence in a dis­course span­ning five cen­turies, and sure­ly beyond.

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