Land of the giants

by Noel Vera

Morgan Spurlock's "Super Size Me" may not seem so much like a
serious documentary as it does one of those reality-TV stunts, and
as a matter of fact, Spurlock did at one point create a cash-for-
stunts series for MTV. Spurlock's particular feat here is inspired
by a recent lawsuit leveled by two teenage girls against McDonald's,
where they claimed damages against the giant food corporation for
their obesity; the two girls lost, of course, but one of the reasons
why they lost--because they failed to prove that eating McDonald's
products every day led to their weight gain--had Spurlock intrigued.
What if, he thought to himself, he recorded himself actually eating
McDonald's products every day for thirty days, and measured the
effects?

Spurlock doesn't actually show us anything we don't already know
(McDonald's rich in fat, sugar, and salt? Hello!); on the other
hand, his day-to-day, obsessively detailed record of weight gain and
deterioration of health and liver does eventually develop the power
of performance art: you can't believe what you're seeing onscreen.
His first meal is a double cheeseburger and supersized Coke and
fries (he had set the requirement beforehand that he would agree
every time a McDonald's employee asked if he would like to supersize
his meal) that he sits down inside his car to eat, and as an
onscreen counter tells us how many minutes has elapsed, we see the
expression on his face gradually transform from grease-and-sugar
bliss to disgust and eventually nausea. Spurlock ultimately vomits
his first supersized meal out the car window, and the cameraman
helpfully peeks outside to catch the spattered mess.

Spurlock eventually tries to broaden his argument, to take in the
wider context, which he does in an entertaining if rather callow
manner. He knows that the greatest argument against his experiment
is the fact that no one forces people to eat at McDonalds (and that
he himself is doing so presumably because he hopes to make a movie
out of it), and he tries to establish a social context where food
corporations not only spend anywhere from 200 million to a billion
dollars per year per company to push their products (by way of
comparison, the government spends a miserly two million dollars per
year to sell their fruit-and-vegetable-rich health diets), they also
start their victims at a very young age. At one point Spurlock
showed various pictures of well-known historical figures to kids,
from George Washington to Jesus Christ (who one cute little tyke
mistook for George W. Bush), and few actually recognized the
pictures; they all, however, recognized Ronald McDonald right off.

Spurlock is on the right track and he scores many a good point. He
doesn't demolish the case for free will--like any good shyster, he
knows that's impossible; he just tries to cloud the issue a little.
Maybe his greatest failing is that, like fellow populist documentary
filmmaker Michael Moore, he's of the "show and tell" style of
documentary filmmaking, with emphasis on telling rather than showing
(we get the dots between facts connected and made explicitly clear
for us; problem is, there aren't as many dots as you'd like).

Perhaps Spurlock's most effective moments are those when he sticks
to concrete details, like the numbers the doctors give regarding his
health: weight gain from a trim 185 pounds to a bloated 210 pounds;
blood pressure from a low 120/80 to 150/90; cholesterol level from
165 to 230 points. One doctor shook his head and said Spurlock's
liver looked like it was on its way to cirrhosis; not surprising in
an alcoholic, but he'd never thought it would be possible from just
eating fast food. Later we see Spurlock slumped over his table,
depressed and exhausted; the joke has stopped being funny. Easily
the most effective horror film I've seen in recent years--which
would include lame attempts like "28 Days Later," "House of a
Thousand Corpses," and the "Dawn of the Dead" remake.

My father the elephant

Nathaniel Khan's "My Architect" is one man's attempt to make sense
of the mass of contradictions and talent that is his father,
architect Louis Khan--a late starter who only found his stylistic
voice at age 51, made as many enemies as he had admirers, managed to
complete only a handful of projects, most of which are considered
great works, ultimately became the most influential architect of the
late 20th century, and--most intriguing of all--sired a child from
three different women, none of whom knew the existence of the others
until they all met at his funeral, a few days after he died
penniless in the Penn Station men's room.

It would be impossible to actually come up with any definite answer
to the question of this fascinatingly complex man; the best
Nathaniel can do is sketch the different enigmas surrounding his
father, make (like the blind men surrounding an elephant) a few
probing and ultimately futile guesses, and dwell in the mystery.

And in his buildings: massive geometric shapes with all the
implacability of ancient monuments (Louis finally found his
inspiration by visiting classic Mediterranean structures), they hide
little of themselves through paint or other kinds of finishing,
Louis preferring to leave concrete or metal or brick nakedly
exposed. Nathaniel speculates that this bare look may have been an
expression of Louis' feelings about his own scarred face (the cause
of a childhood accident), that rather than hide his or his
structures' flaws, he would rather flaunt them, make them part of
the texture, the overall visual style. Nathaniel in his presentation
chooses to take his cue from his father's unostentatious manner;
it's almost as if all he had to do was set up his camera and start
rolling, and the buildings provide impact just by being themselves.

Not entirely true, of course; Nathaniel does choose the perfect
moment to show us the Salk Institute in California, when all the
laboratory windows face dusk, and the canal bisecting the central
courtyard becomes a ribbon of reflected light in a shadowed sea. He
probably helped enhance the footage taken in the Kimball Art Museum
somehow; the light that floods the curved ceilings seems gloriously,
impossibly bright. But it's nevertheless Louis' shapes that stand
out in the setting Californian sun, and it's Louis' ceiling that
seems to capture the brilliant Dallas light so perfectly; this film,
it seems, is a posthumous collaboration between father and son.

Along the way Nathaniel interviews Ed Bacon, the city planner who
shaped Philadelphia's downtown, and who still bristles at the
mention of Louis' name. He interviews a score of architects,
including Philip Johnson, Frank Gehry and I.M. Pei (Pei gives the
most impressive tribute, saying "It is better to only have built a
few masterpieces than to have built 50 buildings"). He talks to
Louis' other woman, architect Anne Tyng, who mentions how he tried
to keep her out of meetings and talks because she was his mistress.
He meets with his stepsisters inside one of Louis' rare houses; they
decide, despite years of living apart and the strange circumstance,
that they are nevertheless a family.

He finally talks to his mother, who still maintains that up to his
dying day Louis intended to leave his wife and go live with her.
Nathaniel poignantly pokes and probes against this conviction,
perhaps wondering if she will ever wake up to the truth, perhaps
wondering still if what she believes somehow might be the truth. The
true burden of geniuses, of course, is the psychic cost their
extraordinariness imposes on the people around them, particularly
the ones they love--Nathaniel himself is living proof of that, as he
tries, in some ways hopelessly, to deal with his feelings of
frustration and disappointment and love towards the man. All of
them, from Louis' lovers and children and colleagues down, have had
to deal with such feelings to varying degrees.

At one point Nathaniel meets Robert Boudreau, who commissioned Louis
to design the Music Ship, an all-metal boat that could fold out to
become an instant floating concert hall. When Nathaniel reveals that
he is the illegitimate son of Louis, Robert's reaction is so
immediate and intense it leaves you breathless and not a little
bewildered: who is this man you think, this Louis Khan, who can
inspire despite his long periods of absence, his chronic neglect and
occasional abuse, such extravagant expressions of affection and
love? It's a measure of Nathaniel's achievement that his film can
provoke you into musings like that.

(First appeared in Menzone Magazine, August 2004)

(Comments? Email me at noelbotevera@...)