Keswick Film Club - Sketches of Frank Gehry

Synopsis

"Sydney Pollack's gentle and rapt documentary about his friend Frank Gehry, the superstar architect who designed the Guggenheim museum in Bilbao, is an intelligent piece of partisan adoration - although he gives some space to Gehry's detractors, too. Interviewees include architecture mandarin Philip Johnston and big capitalist honchos like Disney's Michael Eisner and super-agent Michael Ovitz, all of whom have commissioned status-symbol buildings from Gehry.

It is rare to see so many rich businessmen interviewed in a movie which isn't a Michael Moore-style exposé. Gehry is shown cutting bits off a cardboard model to design a building, and the Blue Peter-y origin of some of his buildings is hilariously detectable. But the majesty of his Bilbao masterpiece is obvious."

PETER BRADSHAW, THE GUARDIAN