Mur murs

Paris is a city of mansard roofs; London of chimney pots; New York of wooden water towers atop buildings. All are decreed y architects, builders, the laws of hydraulics. For Agnes Varda, in the 1970s and 1980s, Los Angeles was a city of murals, created by the people who live among them. This documentary begins by showing us the murals, and then the culture of the artists who make them.

It's a sociological sort of movie, a type she would return to with works like LES GLANEURS ET LA GLANEUSE. Looking at that, she realized her interest was personal, that its subject reflected her passion for finding the small remnants of value overlooked by the modern world. Surely this subject's interest is finding the art all around that no one else seems to have noticed.

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.

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.

The French director Agnes Varda spent a couple of different years in Los Angeles, and this particular year produced her documentary "Murs, murs" and her fiction film "Documenteur". The title means "Walls, walls", but also puns with the word "murmurs." Varda located dozens of murals around LA and filmed them. Many of these are gone today, so this is a true documentary, documenting a wonderful aspect of southern Californian visual culture. She interviews the artists, a truly multicultural and multicolored group--and shows the paintings in their urban contexts. One memorable scene shows a mural at Venice Beach with young people dancing in front of it (probably near where their sons and daughters are roller skating or skateboarding now). An enjoyable movie by a European with deep aesthetic appreciation for marvelous, imaginative, colorful imagery that was considered throwaway pop culture at the time.

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.