Celebrating women film: Pina
Wim Wenders, 2011, Germany, France, UK, USA, Colour, 103 mins, Certificate: U
It is dance, it is theatre, and it is everything else: life, love, freedom, struggle, despair, longing, joy, reunion, strength… And it is truth.
Because a moving, dancing body needs no words and it cannot lie.
Pina’s Tanztheater Wuppertal ensemble spills out into the streets, up the mountains and down by the sea, and it will carry you along in an extraordinarily immersive, achingly “naked” and honest, redemptive experience.
For 20 years Wim Wenders wanted to do a film with his compatriot, dancer and choreographer Pina Bausch. Ever since he was so moved by the performance of her emblematic Café Müller routine in 1985 that he actually wept, even though he had been dragged to see it having no interest in dance at all.
But when the two internationally beloved, leading German artists (he for films like Paris, Texas, and The Wings of Desire, she for her often gravity defining, ever influential dance creations) were about to start shooting their carefully planned collaboration*, she passed away. Taken too soon and too fast by cancer.
He had to be coaxed out of his grief by the dancers of her ensemble (that is still going strong today) and to rethink his film as a tribute to her.
Reviews:
“Crane and steadycam allow Wenders to get so close to the action that in the minimalist Café Müller, one’s illusion of being on stage is uncanny. Bausch’s expressive humanism, the multinational makeup of her troupe, and, in Kontakthof, the added participation of amateurs who range from teens to seniors, uphold the value of dance as a universal language.” Andrea Gronvall, Reader
“If its meaning can be summed up – though it is arguably the point of an abstract artform that it can’t be summed up – it is probably in the words of a dancer who asks, “What are we yearning for? Where does all this yearning come from?” Wenders’s movie uncovers the crucial state of yearning in Bausch’s work.” Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian
“At the time of her death in 2009, the German-born Pina Bausch was one of the most celebrated dancer/choreographers of her time – or any time. You won’t find that kind of biographical detail in fellow countryman Wim Wenders’ Oscar-nominated performance film/tribute piece, but you won’t necessarily miss it, either, not with the utterly transfixing, exhilarating spectacle of bodies in motion.” Kimberley Jones, Austin Chronicle
*in 3D on less – a first for an art film. Unfortunately The Sydenham Centre lacks the capacity for a 3D screening. But the film’s ability to include the audience in the performances, one way or the other, remains to a large degree.