Forever
My girlfriend got a copy of this movie from a friend. She loves documentaries, and hey, so do I.
The topic of this film sounded pretty interesting to me too. It's about the Père Lachaise Cemetery, the largest cemetery in Paris, and one of the most visited cemeteries in the world. There are many famous artists buried here. I love visiting cemeteries. There may be many reasons why. You can see the way that many people wanted themselves to be remembered, or sometimes the way they couldn't help but be remembered. You can see how time has passed and how their grave or monument strikes you now. Cemeteries are usually quiet places. Nature is around. There is an amazing cemetery just several hundred feet away from my apartment in Chicago, the Graceland Cemetery, which I have visited many times. It features many famous architects. And the layout of the cemetery, many of the plots, and the monuments there are pieces of interesting architectural design themselves.
I'm not sure how I would have approached making a documentary about a famous cemetery. Maybe I would approach it the way I visit a cemetery. If there is a tour available, I may take that to get some of the history and visit the main points. And then on my own I would take another stroll through and look at the things that personally interest me. This film also takes a pretty leisurely pace, talking to different visitors and taking a stroll through the grounds. But I'm not sure if it gets a little too ambitious. Since there are so many artists in the cemetery the film tries to make an exploration of the entire world of art as a whole. It's quite unfocused for such a gigantic topic. And while there are a few interesting characters and situations (like the blind people watching a movie together), the movie is a bit too meandering for such a broad topic.
A lot of the movie is causal interviews with the filmmaker asking people why they visited the cemetery. They pretty much play out as they happened and there isn't much editing from what I remember. At one point someone asks her what the movie she is making about, and I think she says something relatively blunt and broad, along the lines of "it's a movie about art" or maybe about art and memories. We also meet many people who have relatives buried there who aren't artists, so it kind of moves all over the place.
The film made me want to visit the cemetery for myself, but not necessarily any more than I already wanted to before I saw the film.
Rating: 5/10