ABSOLUTE WILSON

Reviewed by Harvey S. Karten
New Yorker Films
Grade: B
Directed by: Katharine Otto-Bernstein
Cast: Robert Silson, David Byrne, William Burroughs, Andy De
Groat, Philip Glass, Harvey Lichtenstein, John Simon, Susan
Sontag
Screened at: Review 1, NYC, 8/14/06
Opens: October 27, 2006

Given the debased popular culture of our time, it's no wonder
that classical music (Beethoven, Brahms, Bach), classic film
(Eisenstein, Sturges) and classic theater (Shakespeare,
Aeschylus, Camus) attract only an elite audience.
Contemporary high culture is even more daunting. How many
Americans are going to dig music of relatively recent musicians
(Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Shostakovich, Usachevky), current
movies (Aronofsky, Resnais, Godard) and 20th century theater
(Albee, Rice, Williams)? You don't expect many of the
public even for for Shakespearean drama to eat up the offerings of Robert Wilson, whose theatrical pieces (like "Einstein on the
Beach") may have played in festival circuits but remain cryptic
and therefore anathema to the vast majority of potential
audiences.

“Absolute Wilson,” an HBO documentary of a talented individual who could be called Mr. Avante-garde, is a portrait of the Wilson as both a man and an artist. With the supposition that to understand a person’s work we have to examine his life, Katharine Otto-Bernstein gets Bob Wilson to open up as he has never before done, perhaps giving us in the audience some insight into how he developed into the artist he became. Like so many creative people, he had a dysfunctional home–a distant mother and a father he was forever trying to please but succeeded only when his dad visited a theater performing his most famous work and heard the audience deliver a thirty-minute standing ovation. Of course the fact that Wilson was gay (“We can cure that,” says dad) and that he had a speech impediment and learning difficulties as a youth, cannot be cited as the source of his genius. Ultimately we’ll have to accept the fact that people like Wilson–and like two of his heroes, Einstein and Freud–come along just occasionally in a lifetime to unhinge what we’ve always thought of the world without an explanation to the sources.

We watch Wilson direct his many works actively. He shows the dancers their steps, even correcting the movement of Isabelle Huppert’s palm as she engages in a well choreographed set of movements. Many of his ideas for theater pieces come from his own experiences. For example, “Deafman Glance” is inspired by a black youth who is deaf and mute and whom he adopted after discovering that the 12 people with whom he shared a two-room flat had no idea of the young man’s difficulties.

Of the many talking heads, only John Simon is negative, stating that Wilson’s works are perhaps visually stunning but lacking in substance. By contrast, composer-collaborator Phillip Glass waxes poetic about the man, Tom Waits takes a bow with Wilson at the conclusion of one piece, and David Byrne has nothing but praise for the artistry of a man whose forward-looking theater makes everything on and off-Broadway look positively old-fashioned.

“Absolute Wilson” could have used fewer talking heads and more cuts from works like his most famous “Einstein on the Beach” (which was performed in my home town of Brooklyn, NY and which the late Susan Sontag states she saw several times). What’s the point of knowing what there is to know about a fellow when we get only sound bites of what he has done with his enormous talent?

Not Rated. 110 minutes 2006 by Harvey Karten
harveycritic@cs.com Member: NY Film Critics Online