For the
sake of not having to write the same intro a million
different ways throughout the rest of time, just know that
this column avoids the overly long and sometimes dull
process of full film reviews and instead opts to break
things down based on what I thought going in, what happened
while I was there and what I learned at the end of it all.
Thanks for reading!
The
Breakdown - Crazy Horse
The Impression:
If you know Frederick Wiseman, you know, at least to some
degree, what you’re getting in to - long beautiful shots,
little narrative, and an overwhelming sense of omnipresence.
If that’s something you like, well, that’s an entirely
different matter.
The Reality:
Frederick Wiseman, the 82-year old, Massachusetts born
documentary legend, has made a living for the majority of
his adult life as a prolific fly-on-the-wall. Possibly most
famous for his ground-breaking High School films, Wiseman
doesn’t make documentaries so much, he captures moments.
These moments can be months or days or minutes, but Wiseman
and his crew set up shop and silently record all facets of a
certain person, place or thing, finally editing them
together in to a traditional narrative lacking portrait of
well, something. Crazy Horse finds Wiseman digging
his claws in the famed Crazy Horse nude dance club
(self-proclaimed as the greatest nude chic club in the
world). My girlfriend mentioned, as the first perfectly
rounded buttock swung on to screen, that it was perverse
that an 82 year old man was filming naked twenty-somethings
for weeks on end. I told her she was just jealous. That
said, Crazy Horse follows the opening days of a Crazy
Horse season, a meticulously detailed capturing of the art,
personality, and foible that go in to crafting and executing
a perfect, world-famous live show. It’s strange, as a fan of
female nudity and Wiseman’s documentary style, for me to say
that I found two hours of beautiful women dancing naked
somewhat boring. Wiseman’s goal, seemingly, in all his films
is to drag his subjects out in to the unforgiving white
light of the camera, and in doing so with the dancers,
directors, choreographers, and designers of Crazy Horse, he
squelches some of the erotic buzz. Don’t get wrong, the
sight of a trio of naked women wearing clear space helmets
is particularly stirring, but Wiseman’s omnipresent style
grows old in the confines of the Crazy Horse space. I found
myself uninterested in the subjects (truthfully, at one
point I couldn’t decipher between which woman belonged to
which pair of legs, breasts, ass-cheeks) and the story of
artistic tension Wiseman had seemingly captured. At two
hours and four minutes the film is much too long, and as it
progressed I wished that instead of watching a seamstress
measure a beautiful woman’s butt size, that instead I could
just be seated within the Crazy Horse, champagne in hand,
naked women artfully cavorting on stage.
The Lesson:
Wiseman ain’t for everyone, and this time, well, he just
wasn’t for me.
-
-
Unless
otherwise expressly stated, all text in this blog and any
related pages, including the blog's archives, is licensed by
John Laird under a
Creative Commons License.
