‘Architecton’ is a stone-cold classic
‘Kunda’ filmmaker cements his legacy with visual poetry
After seeing Victor Kossakovsky’s “Architecton,” I’m officially inventing the cinematic term “slo-doc.” What’s a “slo-doc”? A slow documentary, or “slo-doc,” is a nonfiction film that avoids any obvious narrative, character or often even dialogue. Instead, it’s a series of cinematic images, sometimes unrelated, that evoke a certain mood. Think “Koyaaniqatsi” or “Leviathan,” or Kossakovsky’s last film about farm life, “Gunda.”
They can be mesmerizing. They can also be boring as heck.
Fortunately, “Architecton” lives mostly in the former category. While many slo-docs focus on flora and fauna, “Architecton” is primarily interested in stone and concrete, and the world we build out of them.
The opening drone shot focuses on an elegant gold-domed church, and then pulls back to frame the church within the rubble of a bombed-out apartment building. In one shot, we see both the beauty and the ugliness that man can create.
From there, “Architecton” is a series of gorgeous visuals, set to often ominous music by Evgueni Galperine. We see rocks cascading down a mountain like water in an avalanche. Rocks getting pulverized by a crusher, or dancing along a conveyor belt. Ancient columns standing tall, or diced like carrots. The ominous stone face of a cliff. An extruder laying out wet cement like cake frosting.
In one rare moment of humor, we see a dog bounding up a steep stone staircase, the music rising heroically along with him as he ascends. And there’s a brief interlude in the middle featuring not stone but wood, perhaps an intermission for all the stone freaks in the audience to take a bathroom break.
But in general, this is a weighty documentary in every sense, inviting us to lose ourselves in the impassive majesty of both natural and artificial edifices.
There is one narrative through-line running through “Architecton,” as we return again and again to one elderly man. In one thread, he is examining a massive cube-like megalith in Lebanon, marveling at its construction. In the other, he is working with a couple of laborers to build a small rock garden in his yard. At one point, a worker perfectly balances a sphere-like rock on top of a sculpture, a rare example of stone, so massive and imposing in much of the film, looking delicate and fragile.
Late in the film, the man is revealed to be Italian architect Michele De Lucchi. He despairs to a friend that his firm is building yet another cookie-cutter concrete skyscraper, destined to last only 40 or 50 years. The friend poses what may be the essential question of “Architecton”: “Why do we build ugly, boring buildings when we know how to build beautiful ones?”
Or, to draw the question out, why do humans choose to live like this way when the evidence of better ways is all around us? Amid its striking imagery, “Architecton” gives us much to contemplate.
That little rock garden is an attempt to bring a little beauty into the world that will likely outlast its maker. So is “Architecton.”
“Architecton” is now in theaters. In Madison, it is playing at Marcus Point.