Cathedrals of Culture

Overview

If walls could talk, what would they say? Hopefully, something a lot more interesting than imagined by Cathedrals of Culture, a monotonous three-hour documentary screening at ACMI from October 28. Pompous, vapid and repetitive by design, it's a film that feels not only likely but practically determined to lull audience members to sleep.

The film is split into six consecutive chapters, each with a different director, each of whom focuses on a different, significant building in either Europe or the United States. The gimmick is that, rather than just touring the corridors, imagined voiceover provides us with the "perspective" of the structure. The Berlin Philharmonic, for example, is given the voice and temperament of an eloquent middle-aged woman with just the faintest hint of an ego. The National Library of Russia, on the other hand, sounds like a Soviet from a bygone era.

It's a neat idea that wears thin after fifteen minutes, which unfortunately leaves an awful lot of minutes still to go. The film's subject matter is extraordinarily niche to begin with, but even someone who is genuinely interested in architecture will most likely be put off by the stream-of-consciousness narration, which alternates between self-aggrandising and annoyingly mundane.

Frankly, while the buildings may be unique from a design or even historical standpoint, their actual functions — library, concert hall, opera house — are not. The one notable exception to this is the subject of chapter three: Norway's Halden Prison, considered among the most comfortable in the world. A jail in which every inmate gets not only a TV but an ensuite bathroom, this is the one location in Cathedrals of Culture that might actually have been worth committing to film.

The episodic structure is another problem. The fact that we're moved to a brand new setting every half-hour makes it feel as though we're watching a six part ABC series, as opposed to a proper film. There's no sense of momentum, nor any kind of narrative arc, making the movie feel even longer than it is.

Even the involvement of name filmmakers Wim Wenders and Robert Redford fails to invigorate the project. One of the best things about anthology films can often be that they showcase a wide variety of visual styles. On Cathedrals of Culture, however, it would appear that all six directors intentionally aimed for the exact same approach, characterised by slow, floating camera moves that could hardly be more bland. Then again, perhaps that's only fitting.