Creative Process: Norman McLaren

Look at his movies, instead.

Our age has somehow gotten the idea that the artist is more important than the art. I don't feel that way. If it weren't for the art, we wouldn't care about the artist more than any random stranger, so let the art be worthwhile. Sometimes these documentaries offer you insight in technique, but according to this film, there's nothing mysterious about McLaren's technique. He just seems to have done things that no one had thought of before, with beauty and good humor. Where did he get that talent and good humor? I didn't know before I saw this documentary and I don't know now.

So all you're going to learn is about where McLaren was on several particular days and the fact that he loved what he did. Which is less than you can pick up from his movies.

I found this documentary to be a captivating look at the art of Norman McLaren.

While another comment notes that we don't learn where the artistic impulse or creativity comes from, that's too high an expectation from a film such as this, and not really a valid criticism.

Some things I did learn about Norman McLaren are: (1) I've seen a lot less of his work than I thought (2) He had a male "lifetime companion" (how times have changed...) (3) What "chain of mixes" means, including a demonstration (4) He also created geometric models, and made paintings

My only criticism of the film is that (as almost all film retrospectives do) it should have captioned all the clips so the viewer would know which film the clip is from. Shamefully, these weren't even included in the credits.