John Cleese in 'Monty Python'

John Cleese as Mr. Wiggin
of Ironside & Malone
Eric Idle as Mr. Leavy
of Wymus & Dibble






In this sketch, two architects makes very different pitches to real estate developers. One is absurd, and the other is just silly. Is it safe to say that sometimes we take ourselves to seriously? Now, I'm not advocating that we start designing buildings that look like giant picnic baskets or binoculars, but whats it hurt to step back and have a good laugh...

Brian Dennehy in "The Belly of an Architect"

Brian Dennehy as Stourley Kracklite
Lambert Wilson as Caspasian Speckler








American architect Stourley Kracklite comes with his young wife Louisa to Rome to supervise an exhibition devoted to Etienne-Louis Boullée, a French architect of the 18th century. Suffering from severe abdominal pains, Stourley doesn't pay much attention to his pregnant wife, and she finds consolation in the arms of suave Caspasian Speckler. Built from rigidly symmetrical images, the film has quite an unusual subject: the belly -- both the sick one of the architect and the pregnant one of his wife, the rounded forms alluding to the spherical constructions designed by Boullée, the architect whose visionary projects seldom materialized. Beautifully shot on location in Rome, this ironic fable wittily examines the issues of artistic creativity.
~ Yuri German, All Movie Guide



If I have learned anything from the last two movies, its that only American architects are allowed to have fun. Anyway, I added the plot summary from Yuri above because I couldn't have said it better myself. Again, this movie is loaded from beginning to end with studio settings, quotes on working, living and thinking like an architect, that I can't sufficiently summarize it in a few paragraphs. As the movie progresses, Kracklite becomes more and more insane. He writes postcards to the dead architect he is celebrating, he photocopies pictures and sketches of stomachs endlessly, he punches a lot of people in the nose, starts to believe that his wife is trying to poison him and his colleagues are plotting against him.

Of course, during all this insanity, his wife does nothing to make him feel better.
Architect: Tell me please, what does 'oh-ahhh' mean?
Wife: Stourley, you've built six-and-a-half-buildings. And now you're spending nine months putting on an exhibition in memory of another architect who also built practically nothing.
F3!


Of the whole movie, there is one thing that I have to comment on because of its originality. When Kracklite goes to visit a doctor about his stomach pains, the doctor asks what symptoms the architect has.
Not wasting even a moment, the architect says "Why yes, I've been documenting the symptoms."
Here, we would expect a verbal account of whats going on, the sensations that are being felt, an emotional expression of the pain that is spoken. However, the architect proceeds to take out a folder and hand the doctor more than a dozen sketches over photocopies of stomachs, frenzied drawings of red, orange and yellow. Images that are grotesque yet beautiful,images that convey the silent suffering that the architect endures throughout the last months of his life.

Kurt Naumann in "Die Architekten"

Kurt Naumann as Daniel Brenner








In 1990, the film Die Architekten (for those of you who don't know East German, its "The Architects") was released. This project was planned and filmed in the months right before the fall of the Berlin Wall, an event which most probably diminished its impact. Daniel Brenner is a 38 year old architect who has never built anything. Even with a wife and a child, he considers himself a failure. Early on in the film, I spotted a huge difference between the way American and European architects work. At a meeting with the architect Daniel works under, the modest Daniel admits that he has won first place in two competitions, coming in second a few times and earing an honorable mention in many more. The head architect congradulated Daniel on these achievements, but Daniel will have non of it. These days, you'll be hard pressed to find a firm that is willing to allocate a substantial part of its budget to a time consuming project that might go nowhere, but in other parts of the world, the chase seems to be as important as the catch. Its here that Daniel stands alone, he seems to want to be part of the western world. He values his work as long as it produces something tangent, something that can be used. He is alone, apart from his society, he goes so far as to deny his association to the communinist party even when confronted with the fact that his joining would lead to a number of commissions.

In an odd chance, Daniel is given the opportunity to design a huge building, one that would contain housing, movie theaters, resturants, a bowling alley, parks... A whole city in one block. He accepts on the condition that he can choose his dream team, a team consisting of the best students that he worked with during his days at the university.

The Seven Samuri at the Site

Throughout the movie, the important themes of design and construction are as important to the plot as the relationships the characters have with one another. At every turn, the communist party bureaucrats try to negate the design of the complex, and Daniel tries to find ways to covertly include real, unique ideas into his masterpiece.

This movie is worth much more than I can express in a few paragraphs. No matter where you work, find someone in your office who has Netflix, set up the projector on a rainy Tuesday afternoon, get a few bottles, watch it and discuss amongst yourselves. Then go see Click with Adam Sandler to lighten the mood.