Celebrating a quarter-century as the no-bull poet laureate of the form, Frederick Wiseman continues to document movement, process, and direction itself with a thunderous sobriety, making the rhythmic palpitations of action that characterize his best films all the more spellbinding. His formidable unobtrusiveness, whether he be at a welfare office, a high school, a boxing gym or even the Palais Garnier, adorns his film with an impossible sanctity that has, over the years, garnered him a position in cinema not unlike a high priest or, as was suggested recently, a dean.
With Crazy Horse, his 37th documentary, Wiseman remains insatiably fascinated by the inner works of institutions, if not exactly institutionalism. Though, to be fair, half the point of Wiseman's latest is that the bureaucracy that helps the Crazy Horse, the famed French saloon known for its hypnotic, meticulously crafted strip shows, to continuously run is not all that different from the institutional politics that are at play in Hospital or Welfare. Director and choreographer Philippe Decloufe must argue his case for more practice hours in front of the board's representative the same way a prisoner might make a case for release at his parole hearing, though the stakes are admittedly vastly different.
Still, there is an undeniable rush in watching Philippe direct numbers, fine tuning the shadows for a number featuring colored, backlit screens, and choreograph the use of projections against the stage and lighting. The self-reflexive nature of the entire process of fine-tuning each number, directing and gently critiquing performers and consulting with colleagues of various importance and stability is palpable from the first shot. The personal weight Wiseman must feel in documenting laborious, intricate mechanisms of movement, and reflection in what seems like, but obviously is far from, ease is lost on no one who is paying attention.But like Desir, the show that Decloufe is trying to pull-off for the entire duration of this breezy, bemused two hours or so, the proof and reward is in the mesmerizing acts of physical performance that are captured in their entirety. One sad-eyed and lithe performer slinks around and stretches out on a divan to the heartbreaking, lilting melodies of Antony and the Johnson's "Man is the Baby", bathed in the palest, dimmest blue light. There's another stunner that has a group of performers who begin to climb around a large workman rope, but top prize goes to a bewildering early number that incorporates a gleefully produced set of reflected legs and buttocks on what looks like a shiny slab of sex-shop leather, all set to a down-temp cover of Britney Spears' infectious "Toxic."
Reflections and reproductions are, of course, what interest Wiseman most of all. What we see of ourselves reflected in the social despair of Titicut Follies, Domestic Abuse and Public Housing is hard to stomach but harder to dismiss; what we see in his later work, such as La Danse and the remarkable Boxing Gym, is a delight at not only the ability of the camera to capture the encoded rhythm of daily life and physical movement, but at the ability of humans to create something with nothing more than their bodies.
Crazy Horse certainly leaves you amazed at the abilities of the women, each one showing grace, physical exactitude, and timing that suggest a startling devotion to their art. The film essentially provides a nuanced look at Wiseman the precise, technically unerring and prickly practitioner interacting with Wiseman the joyful, adventurous artist, reflected in the interplay between perfectionist Philippe and his able, put-upon performers. The precocious, righteous anger that radiated off of Titicut Follies has here aged finely into a wise state of self-exploration and a celebratory recitation of the form's most basic, least acknowledged pleasures.
