National Gallery: a crushingly dull documentary that lacks an eye for art
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Version 0 of 1. The National Gallery is a magic world in the centre of London. Outside it, on Trafalgar Square, street performers entertain tourists and contemporary art comes and goes on the fourth plinth. On the other side of the gallery, established in 1824 as a free public museum of European paintings, lie Leicester Square and Soho. But inside, you can time travel. Stand in front of Giovanni Bellini’s portrait of Doge Leonardo Loredan, for example, and you are in Renaissance Venice, breathing its air. Contemplate Vincent van Gogh’s painting of his humble wooden chair and you are right there, in his house in Arles in 1888 as he paces anxiously in the next room. He’ll soon be back for the pipe he left ready to smoke. Every painting in this great collection is a window on lost worlds, imaginary worlds, secret worlds. Imagine a film that explored these multiple universes, a film that let the National Gallery’s paintings unfold their mysteries. Frederick Wiseman’s National Gallery, hailed at Cannes and now coming to cinemas, is not that film. Not by a long way. Film critics appear bizarrely enthusiastic about this three-hour documentary. Wiseman is a revered director, whose films observe places and people with what is hailed as acute sensitivity and intelligence. All I can say is that if he brings the same level of insight to his other subjects that he does to National Gallery, he has to be the most superficial documentary maker in the world. There is no real insight into the National Gallery in Wiseman’s film and absolutely no eye for art. He takes three hours to deliver a massive puff for the museum’s staff, laced with patronising and uninterested glimpses of its public, and fails to communicate any of the infinite joys paintings can bring. God it’s boring. I love the National Gallery and I was squirming in my seat. Why doesn’t Wiseman let the paintings speak for themselves? Again and again, he films audiences listening to curators or guides give lectures about the National Gallery’s works of art. One such talk would make sense in a portrait of the museum. But why repeat the exercise, again and again – and again? The effect is crushingly elitist. This film sees the National Gallery from the management’s perspective. Members of the public are shown looking at art, and listening to the wise words of the experts, but where are our flighty, quirky, personal experiences and perceptions? It looks to me as if Wiseman has let the museum’s press officers tell him what to film. Since the National Gallery employs the least pushy press team around, this guy must be a remarkable pushover. Or perhaps he was simply charmed by the place, and let it all wash over him. I have met many of the people in the film and share his respect for them. But surely if Wiseman’s theme is the institution, he should bring some scepticism and rigour to his enquiry? My real objection to the film’s slavish attention to official lectures and comments is that it all gets in the way of the art. Very little of the talk is inspiring. It’s the run of the mill educational stuff that I sidestep rooms to avoid. This ordinariness is revealed when Wiseman – in a genuinely comic moment – films the TV critic Matthew Collings making a film about Turner’s The Fighting Temeraire. Collings is sharp, succinct and provocative. This moment of interesting art talk makes you realise why he is on telly and the National Gallery’s curators are not. This is not to say that Wiseman should have made a conventional didactic art film with a smooth front man. Rather, the freedom of cinema might have let him get us much closer to the paintings – into them, even. A far better film about a great art museum is Alexander Sokurov’s Russian Ark, a passionate and visionary portrait of the Hermitage in St Petersburg. Then again, Jean-Luc Godard says more about art, history and museums by filming his characters cheekily running through the Louvre in his 1964 film Bande à Part than Wiseman manages in three hours of aimless waffle. If Wiseman saw young people running in the National Gallery he would alert a guard. This is a smug film that smothers high culture in deference. You’d be better off spending those three hours in the National Gallery looking at paintings, without anyone to tell you what to think – pure bliss. |