Movies Reviews

Pina – Movie Review

By Ron Wilkinson Dec 27, 2011, 16:12 GMT

A tribute to choreographer Pina Bausch. ...more

From the hauntingly beautiful to the scary, Pina Bausch’s post-modern dance sparkles in 3D.

Wim Wenders has never been one to shirk the responsibility of performing the radically different. This stunning documentary of the choreographic work of Pina Bausch may be one of the most daring chances Wenders has taken so far in his career. Filmed in 3D, the movie takes the viewer directly into the action, for better or for worse.

Filmmaker Wenders and German dancer/choreographer Pina Bausch have a lot in common. He was enthralled when he first saw her choreography, in 1985, when the Tanztheater Wuppertal performed her retrospective in Venice. However, if you saw Wenders' “Buena Vista Social Club” and expect something like that from this Bausch retrospective, think again.

The choreographer’s last name summons up visions of a loving, easy-going dancer walking through graceful steps in the tropical sun. Such is not the case.

Pina was born of Philippine parents in Germany and she lived there most of her life (except for a decade in New York City, in the 1960s, to take off the edge…). Her work is ultra-modern much more than it is Latin; containing more Bauhaus than Buena Vista. She does a piece with extended images of German Wuppertal suspended monorail train.

The cars stream by; emphasizing the entrapment and mechanization threatened by modern society, echoed in the smokestacks and abandoned post-industrial wastelands of rotted technology. Then the viewpoint flips to above the monorail tracks and cars, where the only visible evidence of the vehicle is the rolling steel wheels suspending the hidden metal mammoth below.

This is fantastic and scary. Wonderful stuff, reminiscent of scenes from deep in the sub-conscious, such as the bird’s nest within the clock mechanism in the old Disney “Fantasia.”

Wenders waited over two decades for a medium that had a chance of succeeding in expressing the complexities of Bausch’s concepts. When he saw “U2-3D” in Cannes, he realized the time had come. Then, on almost the very day of the start of shooting, Pina died. Wenders’ immediate reaction was to stop everything, convinced the film was dead.

Bausch’s performers filling the void made the film. Filming in 3D required a monstrous camera with many motors and two, huge lenses and other optics. It was almost as large as the monster suspended Wuppertal monorail. A bulked out robot staring at the feet of the gossamer dancers.

Although it is a performing arts documentary, “Pina” comes across as abstract to the point being cold. It is thrilling at times. Many of the pieces carry the viewer away to beautiful places in the mind, such as the “Rite of Spring” (1975), for which the stage is completely covered with soil (by the end of the piece the dancers, too, are covered with soil.

Others have one concentrating hard, too hard, to determine what they are all about. She attempted to perform what she saw as the core universal need of humankind: love, security and acceptance.

Some of the pieces are mesmerizing. Others are simply blunt, such as the despairing “Café Müller” (1978), in which dancers stumble blindly, across the set, crashing into tables and chairs. Only one person attempts to help, but there is little he can do.

It would be a good idea to read a bit about Pina before seeing this film. Because of her sudden death, there was no chance to learn more about her motives and her logic. She emphasized male-female interactions, frequently in the context of a forbidding or distorting society. Her pieces contain much repetition, the actors developed many of the moves, not Pina herself.

She made the suggestion, offered the inspiration and demanded the revolution. In the film, of the performers described Pina’s final demand before a performance: “You have to scare me.” Pina was, herself, scared. She was afraid of what the world was becoming. She was afraid for us.

She made several documentaries for TV, including “On Tour with Pina Bausch” in 1983. Pieces like this tell more about her back-stage style than is included in “Pina.” This film is almost entirely her work, as opposed to her methods and philosophy. It is as if, at the end of her life, she wanted no more explaining. Her work must fend for itself. See this film and, as Pina said, “Be crazier.”

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Documentary
Directed and Written by: Wim Wenders
Featuring: Pina Bausch, Regina Advento and Malou Airaudo
Release Date: December 23, 2011
MPAA: Rated PG for some sensuality/partial nudity and smoking
Running Time: 106 Minutes
Country: Germany / France / UK
Language: German / French / English / Spanish / Croatian / Italian / Portuguese / Russian / Korean
Color: Color