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Movie Blog: 'National Gallery,' 'Antarctica' Reviewed

Acclaimed and prolific documentarian Frederick Wiseman has turned his lens to a museum – and not just any museum. Works of Leonardo da Vinci, Rembrandt, Velazquez, Titian, and Rubens are among the thousands of classic paintings that fill the halls of London's National Gallery, and Wiseman, in his observant and meticulous way, captures the struggles and joys of keeping the celebrated and venerable institution at such an exulted state.

For those not familiar with the filmmaker, his approach is objective. Fly-on-the-wall, as it were. And while many of the museum's gorgeous and powerful paintings caught his eye, so did the janitors and art restorers, as well as the institution's tedious PR meetings, nude drawing classes and lecturers. The result of all this various material, edited wonderfully with images of some of the world's most celebrated paintings, and sometimes music, is a portrait of a museum that has few counterparts.

While the general takeaway is definitely positive, one does see the museum's struggles. Money, of course, is one thing. Then there's perception. Some on staff would want the museum to do more with the public, to align itself with causes and so forth. But others in leadership have a stiff upper lip, wanting to keep the institution above the fray of public talk. Image, after all, is everything. And for the National Gallery, stooping down to the "lowest common denominator of public taste" is not really an option. Elevation of knowledge, of beauty, of history is paramount. The cause is to exult.

And that's the feeling one gets watching this film, which, I should add, is about three hours long. While the meeting scenes can get pretty boring, if not frustrating, just hearing the workers and museum officials talk about the art – its history, how it's made and restored, or how it looked when it was hung in someone's home hundreds of years ago – is beyond fascinating. More importantly, Wiseman is able, through some cinematic witchcraft, to get at the importance of "The Museum" as a sanctuary, where beauty lives and humanity, in all its glory and despair, can be explored.

National Gallery is screening at the Walker Art Center, starting Friday.

Antarctica: A Year On Ice International Trailer by Anthony Powell on YouTube

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If winter landscapes move you, this'll make you cry. Seriously, Antarctica: A Year on Ice is one of the most gorgeous movies to come out this year, and the time-lapse sequences alone are worth the cost of a ticket. But despite the velvet sunsets and dazzling starscapes filmmaker Anthony Powell captures, beauty isn't all he has to offer. He gives a first-hand account of what it's like to live on the frozen continent, throughout its two seasons (summer, winter), and all the challenges that come with it.

The film was 10 years in the making, and he shot it, impressively, with Survivorman-style contraptions of his own invention. The presentation is straight-up. He points a camera and says, effectively, "This is what a snowstorm looks like with hurricane force winds." The footage is extraordinary. While Minnesotans may think they know winter, they have not seen a fury like this. Powell talks often to the camera, detailing a bit of his life/marriage, and he also interviews workers/friends on the continent's largest work station, McMurdo. But these people aren't the scientists you'll find in Werner Herzog's Encounters at the End of the World, they are shop keepers, communications people, firefighters. During winter, they're stuck on the ice, no flights or ships in or out, and there's no sun for months.

You'd think these people who've "wintered" would go nuts, and they sort of do. Yet, many say that what they experience in the winter is unforgettable. Such things include the Southern Lights, which dance seemingly overhead, "like you can touch them," and the stars. Massive splatterings of stars, the visible Milky Way, the pinks and turquoises of individual twinkling bodies fly across the screen of Powell's film, and the experience is overwhelming. You can understand why one worker says she found herself on her knees, crying, from witnessing such night-time vistas of our place in the universe.

It's almost too bad there's not more of those images and less of the interviews. But all the beauty wouldn't hit so hard if Powell didn't say, in his non-pretensions kind of way, that these wonders only exist down there because there's effectively no human footprint. That could change, however, in the future, and make this film about a place once wild and now tainted. After all, he does show, that the ice is cracking.

Antarctica: A Year on Ice is playing at the Lagoon Cinema.

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