The ability to conjure art out of massive edifices has something to do with the reverence many hold for our world's top architects. It could also be that most of the buildings the average person walks past or finds themselves inside on a daily basis don't have much to recommend it. Whereas the moment that you come across a structure that cuts through the air in a way that snaps your head back or causes a flutter of awe is so rare that the people who made such a thing happen can seem like modern-day magicians. It's that sense of being in the presence of greatness which both animates and stultifies this glinting bauble of a documentary about architect Norman Foster.
Raised in a humble home on the wrong side of the tracks in brick-bound Manchester, Foster might have grown up a dreamer but above all, he was a sketcher. Filmmakers Norberto Lopez Amado and Carlos Carcas return to this point time and again, that the great architect is ultimately an artist, charged with turning the neatly-etched drawings that fly from his fingers into glass-and-steel reality. They also emphasize the sense of athleticism and adventure embodied by this trim and hale, nearly eighty-year-old man. His love of marathon skiing and flying seems to be all of a piece with the muscular yet airy and light structures that he conjures into existence.
The best example of Foster's approach seems to be the bridge he built in Millau, France. Apparently the tallest bridge ever constructed, it sits astride a wide and deep green valley like the gift of some benevolent alien race. All gleaming white and glinting steel, with the towers spiking into the sky, it looks suspiciously unreal, like those overoptimistic computer animations that architects love to create about their dream projects. More believable are the buildings we see that Foster's firm has built around the world for people, but that could be just because they're so recognizable at this point. The Hearst Tower in Manhattan (a curious neo-ziggurat rising in staggered cubes from a classical edifice), the see-through dome that rises above the rebuilt Reichstag in Germany, and the glass bullet-like Swiss Re tower in London (better known as The Gherkin); these are all buildings walked past and marveled at by thousands each day. These are all institutional structures, as befitting a man who started out designing industrial buildings, but with a democratic flair to them.
As a celebration of the best that architecture can be, the film ranks among the best. Instead of standing back in awe at Foster's more radical nature, like his experimentations in making structural supports part of the outer frame instead of the inner, the filmmakers try to emphasize the building's apparent livability and workability. Of course, that doesn't mean the filmmakers spent much time interviewing people who worked in these giant, airy spaces - one wonders what it is actually like to have an office in one of Foster's signature soaring atriums. Therein lies one of the film's critical flaws.
How Much Does Your Building Weigh, Mr. Foster? (the title comes from a surprising question put to him about one of his earliest structures) isn't ultimately interested in being much more than a roughly eighty-minute pep rally for its subject. The mood is so worshipful and uncritical, in fact, that it could easily serve as an advertisement for his international practice, Foster + Partners. (In fact, it would be shocking if they don't send the DVD out to prospective clients.) It's a less exacerbated version of a problem seen in the recent Harry Belafonte documentary, Sing Your Song, which was less an honest appraisal of an important artist and activist than an extended home movie. The fact that Foster's film, with its camera soaring over airbrushed-seeming cityscapes and complete lack of critical perspective, can look and feel more like an extended telecom advertisement than a nonfiction film, is a disservice not just to the viewer but Foster himself. You forget much of this film soon after it's completed, unlike his buildings, which linger with the force of art.
