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Movies & TV

Review: Cathedrals Of Culture

CATHEDRALS OF CULTURE Part I (Wim Wenders, Michael Glawogger, Michael Madsen): 86 minutes. Part II (Robert Redford, Margreth Olin, Karim Aïnouz): 82 minutes. Some subtitles. Opens Friday (December 19) at TIFF Bell Lightbox. See Times. Rating: NNNN


A six-part 3D series about “the soul” of iconic buildings, Cathedrals Of Culture explores architecturally adventurous spaces where people congregate for the purposes of art and science or, in one eerie episode, indefinite incarceration.

Among Cathedrals’ diverse array of directors, Wim Wenders seems most obviously at home with the project’s concept, his camera roaming the golden, tent-like Berlin Philharmonic with the same unpredictable fluidity seen in many of his features. Equally impressive is Michael Madsen‘s tour of Denmark’s Halden Prison, which emphasizes the striking contrast of serene gardens, private yards and bucolic surroundings with the penitentiary’s serpentine exterior wall, ubiquitous security cameras and stark, confining cells.

Robert Redford‘s piece on California’s Salk Institute for Biological Studies is less imaginative and engaging and more akin to a glossy advertisement, employing a lot of archival footage and umpteen shots of scientists striding stoically across the courtyard. Margreth Olin‘s segment on the Oslo Opera House relies on drab, sepia-toned freeze-frames and, aside from some impressive vistas of its vast ash-white patio, fails to give an especially strong sense of space.

One of several pieces in which a building provides voice-over narration, Karim Aïnouz‘s playful rendering of Paris’s Centre Pompidou as a sentient entity conveys equal parts wonder, hope and loneliness. The late Michael Glawogger extracts passages from volumes in the Russian National Library for a bilingual voice-over, imparting a sweeping historical and geographical context as well as welcome doses of dry humour.

Movies at their most absorbing provide us with a space to inhabit for a while, yet very few make actual spaces their subject. Cathedrals Of Culture is a mostly spellbinding homage to those places we shape – and that in turn shape us.

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