Architecton

Wow. This is a really wild and amazing film. The visuals and cinematography are undeniably stunning! Just takes you to another place and time as it explores building, stone, and how we build as a society. Music was powerful and really important to the film as well. The story is a bit hard to decipher.. until later in the film when there is a conversation that sort of spells it out. Not sure that if that was the most effective or powerful way to relay the message to the audience. But even with that, it was a powerful ride that we were taken on. I really enjoyed it.

The further you watch this film, the clearer your ideas become and the stronger the emotions. The text of the few lines is extremely sophisticated. The two old people do not try to give answers, but just describe a dream. Behind the dream are all the images of the film.

From destroyed building facades to ancient buildings, blasting to construction, the director filmed them all from an unusual perspective. The small stones are like running water, but the huge quarry is like a ripple.

From ancient times to the present, stones have been manipulated in this way in images and reality from start to end.

The tangled thoughts and emotions in the first half suddenly became clear when the "circle" was formed and began to expand slowly. Then you will start to admire the director's magical camera scheduling and arrangement. Master skill.

But the sound of the explosion was too sudden, even if it counted down.

After I left the house, I was still not satisfied, so I listened to "Cai Shi" by Omnipotent Youth Society. The perfect background music comes from "The theory of becoming".

Watch the trailer for 2 hrs and that's pretty much the film. What a pretentious POS! Horrible documentary, how this has more than 10% is astounding. If you aren't able to answer the questions u ask at the end of the film than you need a broader education. Why do we use cement? Because it's the cheapest. It has to do with money. You obviously haven't been around the world as there are ple ty of places that still use natural resources to build with , such as wood and bamboo. What a useless, Garbage piece of a documentary.

When I started watching this, I was expecting a "regular" documentary about the history of stone and concrete, and their use as building materials. Of course that's not at all what I got.

Though I can appreciate artsy films, I have to admit that at some point they can become tiresome. Architecton definitely falls into that category. It shows images related to stones/concrete, but there does not seem to be an arc connecting them. Here are bombed-out buildings. Here are rocks being blasted. Here is an interesting concrete building. Here is an old man using rocks in his garden. Here are some more bombed-out buildings... And on it goes. There aren't even any titles to let us know where we are/what we are looking at.

Perhaps 20 years ago I would have been more impressed. However, now in 2025, this film had nothing new to offer. I've seen all these images before, and this format of images set to music has been done to death. With today's video and drone technology, I feel like this isn't much better than many videos you can find on YouTube, or something a film student could create.

Architecton is an interesting documentary that explores the ancient buildings, constructions, and the world perspective about the stones graved into the earth. It's a surreal experimental piece of art.

Director Victor Kossakovsky does a beautifully work on capturing the stones and the world of concrete by using gorgeous camerawork, intensifying soundtracks and colors presented. Each shot of the buildings and the rocks shines well on the magic about rocks and the amazement of concrete surface. The use of incredible sound designs, imagery and poetic nature structure was very purposeful and intriguing.

Being near dialogue free, at times, I did wish the documentary did focus a bit on certain context since there are certain aspects that I thought could have been explored a bit more. But overall, a really good documentary.