Barcelona bizarre

>> Hiroshi Teshigara’s Antonio Gaudí is an impressionistic look at a visionary architect

by MARK SLUTSKY

If you have even a passing interest in modernist architecture, art nouveau or the city of Barcelona, you’re probably familiar with the magnificent and strange work of architect Antonio Gaudí. Along with the art of Joan Miró, his buildings define the city’s visual identity.

Shunning straight lines, Gaudí’s works are wavy and organic, and seem to have grown out of the ground. They could be an exotic and intricate species of plant, or the hives of an alien civilization; even today, more than a century after most of them were built, they feel startling and new.

It shouldn’t be surprising that he was also a bit of a nut. Before starting his masterwork, the Sagrada Famíllia cathedral, he fasted for 20 days, just to get into the Jesus spirit. And when he was hit by a streetcar in 1926, the shabbily dressed visionary died unrecognized in a pauper’s hospital.

This week, as part of their continuing series of films on architecture, the Cinéma du Parc will be showing Hiroshi Teshigara’s 1984 documentary Antonio Gaudí, from a nice-looking 35mm print. Teshigara, who died of leukemia in 2001, is best known here for 1964’s Woman in the Dunes.

Antonio Gaudí is a highly impressionist doc with almost no dialogue; it’s been called an “architectural symphony.”

The film opens with shots of Barcelona: the city’s Barrio Gotico, folk dances in public squares. You get the sense that Teshigara is both inferring Gaudí’s influences and suggesting the peculiar tone, a mix of solemnity and playfulness that characterizes his work. We’re then treated to a thorough cinematic adoration of his work, as well as more nods at the shapes, forms and ideas that influenced him, along with a bit of narration at the end to establish some context.

The film climaxes with the Sagrada Famíllia, a spectacular project that occupied the architect for 40 years. At the time of his death, the cathedral was incomplete, and nearly 60 years later, when the film was made, it was still a work in progress. To this day, it’s not finished; construction is expected to end in 2026, exactly a century after Gaudí’s death.

Antonio Gaudí shows at the
Cinéma du Parc from Friday,
April 4 to Thursday, April 10

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