Touches You

Admirable film.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

I don't think I like Ken Burns very much. We are at cross purposes. He comes to give me a good story, tight with no lapses, that moves smoothly without holes. What I come for is insight, the holes, the spaces, the sight you get from emptiness. I cannot imagine a less suitable topic for the Burns approach than this particular mind.He wants to tell the story of a genius, and like so many storytellers he constructs the man and assumes that as we know him, we will know his works, which are assumed to flow from his makeup. So we get a linear history: birth, life (a long one), death. Events happen and along the way out pops a building which we take the time to briefly visit. The passion of the man and indeed the transcendence of some of the spaces are conveyed not through firsthand cinematic experience, but through the passionate reporting of experts. I must admit their passion is contagious and they held my interest. But there was no experience with the space. Apart from grand notions of unitarian communion with nature, no spatial ideas. We have a truly unfortunate decision, that architecture in the first moments is made analogous to music, the constructions being the same. Then when a spatial experience is expected, we get swelling of this and that classical piece; Beethovan caps it as we tour the Guggenheim. The documentary moves at the now standard TeeVee pace with no long form building because of those commercials (yes, in public broadcasting). While it flows, the whole world of Wright is about stillness, holding, breath not yet breathed. His spaces do not flow, like say his contemporaries Horta or the best of Gaudi. They are of the landscape, inspired by Japanese Buddhist ideas of still containment. The form of the film fights the architecture and the ideas behind it.I advise you not to see this because it will mess you up. Until he was 63, Wright was an essayist, not a novelist. He made buildings as statements, not as working whole environments. They were not designed to work, but rather to give the impression that they could. This makes them important of course, but you need to appreciate that the best architecture is not the one with signs, and probably not the one that seems easy to read. It surely is not the one that bends people to the space rather than the other way around.It is good to know about his history, the family, the Ouspensky-inspired apprentice program and the obsession with Japan. It is good to know that he was a passionate man, sexually attuned and spiritually bound to his women. But the impression we get is that he was a ball of creative fire, throwing grand designs off casually. That was the myth he invented. In fact he was an ordinary architect and a second-rate celebrity until 63 and he knew it. He was promoting a talent larger than what he had or could be. At 63 — exactly like Kurosawa — his inner demons drove him nearly to suicide. Kurosawa tried.At that point, considered obsolete he reinvented himself into a man of true vision. It would have been good to have been told that this came from constant fawning attention from the curated apprentices his wife surrounded him with. And that he had a sensual-spiritual- sexual awakening at that age. Everything after that was about the form. He would lack subtlety until he died, but he could conceive the form whole first and then explain it to the paper, carrying the scrolls like scripture.That crisis that changed him among the many crises he had. That dry period where he knew he would die having never mattered no matter how much bluster was expended. That's what we needed to know.And doggone, Burns needs to allow that great architecture is a matter of having the great ideas first. We invent a history afterward to explain why we like what we have been convinced to like. There is an intrinsic beauty to great architecture, but it is because the talent of the artist is in how he sells it to our souls, and not what he sells so much. Burns has let us down.But I am glad he did not kill himself, and Kurosawa as well. Because after 63, they helped invent me.Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.

Like many great men, Frank Lloyd Wright was complex and controversial. You either love his architecture, or you hate it. Few people are lukewarm about Wright's work. After seeing this documentary, few will be lukewarm about the man.Raised on the idea that he was destined for greatness, Wright behaved throughout his life as if he were above the constraints of ordinary people. This documentary takes an unflinching look at the turmoil this caused in Wright's life.The vignettes of family members are moving, particularly a scene near the end when his grandson recalls Wright's death. By simple chronological narrative, Burns takes us from dazzling heights when Wright's fellowship was thriving artistically and financially, to dismal lows when his wife had to wear hand-me-down coats in the cold Wisconsin winter.The commentaries by architecture illuminati are illuminating, if perhaps a bit insular. Vincent Scully gained fame at the distinguished Yale School of Architeture. Phillip Johnson, a graduate of Harvard, once referred to Scully as the most influential teacher of architecture in history, and used his position as founder of MoMA Department of Architecture and Design as a bully pulpit to vilify Wright's work during Johnson's association with Bauhuas buddies Meis and Gropius. Robert A. M. Stern is currently Dean of Yale's School of Architecture, and with Scully, was responsible for popularizing the work of great architects like Robert Venturi. Still, this cabal of academic elitists sing a harmonious chorus of praise to Wright that demonstrates the rising and falling tides of Wright's popularity.The documentary will not satisfy those who merely wish to see a catalog of Wright works, and after all, is there anyone alive who hasn't explored that body of work? It focuses instead on Wright the man, something much less understood. Wright is described as everything from a genius, a charlatan, and a con artist, to the greatest American Architect, and probably all are true. But if Wright and his early mentor Louis Sullivan were correct that form follows function, then perhaps genius is best understood by examining the life that developed it.The makers of this film "get" Wright, and the consistency of Wright's vision, from his earliest work, to mid-career masterpieces like Fallingwater, to his final triumph with the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum on Fifth Avenue in New York City is presented with insight and perspective. A great documentary about a great man.

Wright complained to a friend about about how many thousands of dollars he owed. His friend lent him money to pay off his debts. Later that day, Wright went out and purchased three grand pianos! And went back to complaining about his debts. He felt a compulsion to live at 'the edge.' "Take care of the luxuries of life, and the essentials will take care of themselves," Wright philosophized.Ken Burns examines the character of Frank Lloyd Wright. What made him 'tick'? How does one go about becoming the greatest American architect of the 20th Century? (or as Wright would say: the greatest architect of all time)? A few of Wright's grandchildren are interviewed to help solve this puzzle. A 100-year-old son of the famed architect wheezes his views, in a raspy voice. Those views aren't very flattering: Wright abandoned his first wife, and his children, for various women over the years. In fact, he was jailed in Minnesota for crossing the state border in the company of a woman for 'immoral purposes.' He proved an embarrassment to his family. "I have felt fatherly feelings towards my buildings, but never towards my children," FLW muttered.Burns interviews the long-lived architect, Philip Johnson: "I hated Wright. Hated him." Embittered with feelings of jealousy, and contempt, Johnson (serving in the 1930's as a curator at New York's Museum of Modern Art) had the unenviable task of wrestling a small home design from FLW - to be displayed with other modern architects at a museum exhibition. Wright, who was penniless at the time, refused to cooperate, insulted that he wasn't offered a solo show. Johnson: "I felt he was the greatest American architect of the NINETEENTH century. When someone at MoMA said they wanted Wright to be part of a modern architect showcase, I said sarcastically, 'Isn't he dead?'" Wright may have been 'dead' in 1930, but FLW's creative output after his 1935 comeback (Fallingwater) remains unequaled.Many of the interviews (including some of Johnson's answers) are very positive regarding FLW's work. Sometimes overly reverent. FLW is compared to Beethoven. And the Johnson Wax Building is called his 'Ninth Symphony.' FLW, the man, on the other hand, is branded a con-man, a charlatan, a child who liked to play with other people's money.Titles, such as "Can you just build me an office building?" or "I am immortal," divide the documentary into focused segments. Much like chapters of a biography. Each 'chapter' includes a question and answer with FLW himself - taken from an early television interview - with young Mike Wallace as reporter.In response to another reviewer on this site who claimed that the Tokyo Imperial Hotel is not covered...perhaps that was true for the PBS broadcast...but that is NOT true for the extended home video version of this film. The earthquake-proof Imperial Hotel (for which FLW designed every aspect - down to the Hotel stationery) is briefly covered, but for no more than five minutes.Many building projects are shone, but few are examined in any real detail. Perhaps one or two pervading traits of a particular structure will be mentioned and shown. Burns gives you enough information to get a taste of FLW's genius, but not enough for you to learn the nuts and bolts of architecture. Aspiring students will need to consult a book for that. But, for the rest of us, who are merely curious, the footage of the buildings are long enough to grant us a sense of place, a sense of serenity, and a glimpse of that organic truth for which Wright devoted his life.

Frank Lloyd Wright is the most innovative and influential architect in the 20th century. He shaped the way we think about buildings today, and put architecture at a different level of thinking. Buildings look simple in design but modern in method of the art of architecture. Even if you are an architect or not, you will enjoy this documentary.