Not Coming to a Theater Near You

Absolute Wilson / USA / 2006

I gotta say that Katharina Otto-Bernstein’s hagiocumentary of avant-garde opera director Robert Wilson is very PBS: i.e., linear, flatfooted, sentimental, with terrible music. But it doesn’t really matter when you’ve got a subject as fascinating, and self-conscious, as this one. A man of infinite attention to detail, known for crafting slow-moving, monumental stage tableaux, Wilson himself has elegance enough to spare, and frankly it’s kind of a relief to offset his tyrannical pursuit of aesthetic perfection with a cinematic effort on a more modest scale. Otto-Bernstein does a thorough job, too: there’s abundant archival footage from Wilson productions going back to the late 1960s, and revealing interviews with Wilson, Philip Glass, David Byrne and other downtown New York luminaries.

The most interesting aspect of Absolute Wilson, though, is the way it tracks the American avant-garde’s evolution from countercultural hijinks (a bunch of sleep-deprived bohemians performing on an Iranian mountain for seven days straight in 1972’s KA MOUNTain and GUARDenia Terrace) to ultraprofessionalized, corporately funded international business concern (Wilson in a power suit, screaming into a cell phone about securing “French moneys” for the CIVIL warS, his projected six-continent contribution to the 1984 Olympics). There’s a lesson in here somewhere, and it may not be the one about the redemptive power of individual genius that Otto-Bernstein seems to want to put forward.

by Evan Kindley | Source: New Yorker DVD
25 Mar 2008 2:08 PM | Submit Comment