Christo’s Valley Curtain (1974; Dir.: Ellen Giffard; Albert Maysles; David Maysles)
GRADE: A-

Running Fence (1977; Dir.: Albert Maysles; David Maysles; Charlotte Zwerin)
GRADE: A

Islands (1987; Dir.: Albert Maysles; David Maysles; Charlotte Zwerin)
GRADE: B

The Gates (2007; Dir.: Antonio Ferrara; Albert Maysles)
GRADE: B

By Daniel Barnes

The films of the great documentary filmmaker Albert Maysles rarely lacked for colorful characters, including Marlon Brando and Orson Welles, The Beatles and The Rolling Stones and Muhammad Ali, the fading Beales of Grey Gardens and the sweaty Bible pushers of Salesman.  However, he returned to the conceptual artist Christo more than any other subject.  Over four decades, Maysles, his brother David, and various other collaborators directed half a dozen films about Christo’s colorful, massive, self-funded public art projects. They made for the perfect counterbalance. Albert the fly-on-the-wall observer, and Christo the wild-haired Bulgarian visionary.  Their films together remain essential to the Maysles filmography.

Christo’s Valley Curtain

Christo specialized in temporary public installations, usually involving large pieces of fabric stretched alongside natural wonders or draped over famous buildings and structures. The 28-minute Christo’s Valley Curtain chronicles his attempt to hang a giant, orange curtain along a gap in the Rocky Mountains of western Colorado.

Valley Curtain is a perfectly lean concept film, contrasting the safety and tranquility of the studio where Christo meticulously prepares his models and sketches against the unpredictability of the outside world where the final product gets constructed. Working in windy conditions, a simple snag in the curtain endangers the lives of the wire workers, but the result is a remarkable feat of engineering and blue-collar labor in the service of pure whimsy and wonder.

One of the running themes of the Maysles/Christo films is the need for Christo to assemble large teams of dedicated workers to realize a deeply personal vision. It’s a pretty potent analog for auteur-ism in cinema, not to mention the concept of authorship on any grand artistic scale.

Running Fence

Since Christo’s projects involved a mix of public buildings and private lands, they took years of planning and politicking.  Meanwhile, Christo considered the petty humiliations of the county commission and zoning board meetings to be part of his artistic process.  That’s where the verite approach of the Maysles brothers came in handy.

In the hour-long Running Fence, we get a fuller picture of that process on arguably his most important project: a 24-mile fence of billowing white sheets that snaked through the counties of Sonoma and Marin and into the ocean.  The fence becomes a magnet for public skepticism and political backlash.  Over and over again in these films, we see Christo forced to defend his legitimacy as an artist to a skeptical public.

It’s frustrating and belittling, and yet the controversy and media spotlight almost forces people into a discussion about art, as with the greasy-spoon waitress who scoops meatballs and muses on the “nifty” qualities of the fence’s design. Running Fence is about how we engage with art – as creators, as critics, as citizens, as governmental bodies, and as sensory input machines.  Running Fence sits on the same level as Maysles classics like Salesman, Gimme Shelter and Grey Gardens.

Islands

1987’s Islands leaps ahead in time a decade, finding Christo noticeably greyer and increasingly ground down by the process of political engagement. Islands is the first film in the series that prominently features Christo’s wife and irreplaceable collaborator Jeanne-Claude, who in the 1990s was retroactively co-credited on all of his major projects (the films, however, stay centered on Christo).

Islands is the least focused and most didactic of the movies, partly because it contains too much of Christo explaining his art.  Also, the central project – wrapping the islands of Miami’s Biscayne Bay in bright pink fabric – counts among his least aesthetically appealing.

However, Islands is also a fascinating look at the insane logistics of his projects (he’s simultaneously making plans to wrap Paris’ Pont du Neuf Bridge and Berlin’s Reichstag), and at the political groveling (a slimeball county commissioner deems a $50,000 kickback “not significant”) and public shaming (he’s still fighting the same fights over artistic legitimacy) that are necessary to make his flights of fancy a reality.

The Gates

The reflective 2007 film The Gates is a culmination, both for Maysles and for Christo/Jean-Claude.

As the artists announce their latest and most ambitious project – lining 24 miles of walking paths in New York’s Central Park with orange metal gates, with orange flags hanging from above – the film flashes back 25 years to when the project first stalled.  Naturally, Maysles was there to capture the disappointment.

From the beginning, everyone advises Christo to consider any potential negative aspects of the project, and The Gates makes it clear that obstinate NIMBY-ism is as prevalent in Manhattan and Harlem as it is in Napa County. Christo endures the same stupid questions and criticisms, and he’s more detached than ever (“We don’t give interviews now,” says Jeanne-Claude), disappearing for almost the entire second half.

That absence is an unexpected strength of The Gates, as it allows Maysles and co-director Antonio Ferrara to focus on the ways that people react to the finished project, with reflexive outrage turning into a spiritual sort of wonder. “This feeds the soul,” says one visitor.  In their examination of the ways that art infuriates and enriches us, these meditative and insightful documentaries feel just as nourishing.

Read more of Daniel’s reviews at Dare Daniel and Rotten Tomatoes, and listen to Daniel on the Dare Daniel podcast.