Mur murs

It's a documentary of murals in Los Angeles. It's roller-skaters, local folks, and the various murals. It's a nice time capsule. It's an interesting path to drive down and investigate the local communities. It has interviews with some of the artists. I would like time-elapsed montages of the artists working on their murals. It's nice to hear from these unknown artists.

I love street art and I love Agnès Varda, so this was heaven for me. There is such purity in the artwork from the streets of 1980 Los Angeles shown here - representing the underrepresented, living outside the world of galleries and collectors, and the inherent transience of the pieces. There is a purity to Varda as well, and how organically she let the artists tell their stories speaks volumes about her humanity. There are moments I wish had gotten a little less attention, like the slaughterhouse mural, but there are also moments that took my breath away, like the "teachers, please don't give up on me ... I am somebody" artwork in the Compton Jr. High School, or the artist talking about finding his brother lying in a pool of blood as the backdrop to one of his works. Varda gives it all to us without judgement, and that's part of the beauty of what she created.

Perhaps Varda's most relaxed film, this tone poem or love letter or colorful greeting card, depending on your mood, to the murals of 1980s Los Angeles, with its focus on East LA and Venice, is the perfect movie to watch if you find that you've been imbibing too much Woody Allen or Joan Didion and desire an antidote to those dour, veteran LA haters. Or just if you're a fan of street art. Or if, like me, you were born in the city of Angels and have never really left it, both physically and psychically. So, yeah, I'm biased but I just loved it. Wished it could have gone on for another half hour, at least. And shame on my home town's civic leaders for allowing too many of these gems to be destroyed. Give it an A minus.

Apart from many re-releases due to the anniversary of the film in question, this year there are also many retrospectives. After the Kurosawa retrospective not so long ago I am now in the middle of two retrospectives of French speaking directors. There is a retrospective of the work of the Dardenne brothers on the arthouse streaming service and a retrospective of Agnes Varda at my local arthouse cinema.

The only film of Varda I had seen up till now was "Cleo de 5 a 7", a fiction film from 1962. From the retrospective I selected "Mur Murs", a documentary from 1981 and "Les glaneurs et la glaneuse", also a documentary but this time from the year 2000. It is not a coincidence that two of the three films are documentaries. Much if the oeuvre of Varda is situated in the grey zone between fiction and non fiction.

"Mur murs" is a documentary about wall paintings in Los Angelos, a subject that is close to the heart of Varda. At the end of her career she revisited the subject of wallpaintings in "Visages villages" (2017). During the film I was a little uncomfortable about watching a movie about wall paintings in LA but never had participated in an existing bycicle tour along wall paintings in my hometown Breda in the Netherlands.

Some of the paintings, described by Varda as "mythical snakes that wind through the city", are really beautiful. Often the artist is allowed to elucidate his work of art. The fact that daily life goes on in front of the walls give the documentary a playful accent.

It becomes clear that many wall paintings are made by artists of foreign descendant. In their work they illustrate the difficulties that immigrant groups have adapting to the American society. In this respect it is not unthinkable that the Trump adminstration will inspire many more wall paintings.

Despite the fact that the film shows (as mentioned earlier) many beautiful paintings and remains playful at the end I missed the overarching story. A story that is for example present in a film such as "Russian ark" (2002, Aleksandr Sokurov), after all a film that is also predominantly about paintings.

Agnès Varda may be a French director, but her work in L.A. is easily some of her best. Mur Murs is an incredible documentary, filming and preserving not only the mural art (some of it paid commercial art, some of it commissioned, and some of it illegal) that is all around L.A. but interviewing the artists as well and finding out the touching and interesting reasons why people turn to this art form.

It's a very spare documentary, despite the interviews there is not a lot of talking, and the majority of the time the camera is busy filming the murals and people walking in front of it.

It's a wonderful outsiders look at something that the people who live there must take for granted, but as someone who has never visited Los Angeles I appreciated the look into this beautiful art form.