In "Sketches of Frank Gehry," director Sydney Pollack films buildings with the same sensuality he brings to on-screen lovers — tracing the surfaces and contours as if they were cheekbones or eyelids, noting the way walls interlock like arms in ecstatic embrace. During his 40-year career, the creator of such landmark works of American cinema as 1973's "The Way We Were" and "Out of Africa," for which he won an Oscar in 1985, had never made a documentary. That was until good friend and world-renowned architect Frank O. Gehry asked him to do one on him. "But I don't know anything about architecture," says Pollack in the film. "That's why you're perfect for the job," retorts Gehry. And so began a beautiful project.
Gehry was originally from Canada and studied architecture in Southern California. From the time he opened his own firm at age 34 until he won the Pritzker Award (the Nobel Prize of architecture) at age 60, Gehry was more or less overlooked by the American architectural world. Now, at 77, his name is one of its most treasured. Gehry's works are distinguished by an almost naive, childlike delight in shape and form. Sculpturesque, they're seemingly less functional than "serious architecture"; Gehry is famed for valuing form over function, or rather for erasing the boundaries between the two. His works can be seen the globe over, from Kobe to Scotland and more recently in Tiffany's jewelry designs.
But "Sketches" shows that even Gehry — often described as "blessed" for the way he unleashes his personality on buildings — must practice restraint occasionally. One memorable conversation between Pollack (who's not at all camera-shy here) and Gehry occurs when they share a mutual melancholy about finding a creative niche of self-expression in largely client-dictated projects ("It's so uphill, so much of the time!" says Pollack. Or was it Gehry?). Also, like some movies, architecture takes years to complete, and Gehry sighs that by the time a work is close to being finished, "I don't like it anymore."