{"id":763544,"date":"2026-09-08T03:30:13","date_gmt":"2026-09-08T03:30:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/763544\/"},"modified":"2026-09-08T03:30:13","modified_gmt":"2026-09-08T03:30:13","slug":"from-inside-out-the-architecture-of-peter-zumthor-documentary-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/763544\/","title":{"rendered":"‘From Inside Out: The Architecture of Peter Zumthor’ Documentary Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

As the saying goes, \u201cWriting about music is like dancing about architecture.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Most read that line as an expression of folly. Wim Wenders, however, treats it as a checklist. Having already delivered genre-defining documentaries on music (\u201cBuena Vista Social Club\u201d) and dance (\u201cPina\u201d), the German filmmaker now checks off a third discipline with \u201cFrom Inside Out \u2014 The Architecture of Peter Zumthor,\u201d which just premiered at the Venice Film Festival.\u00a0(Literature, presumably, will be next.)<\/p>\n

Wenders\u2019 latest figures to draw a narrower audience given the inherent austerity of its subject. That\u2019s not a criticism, merely a statement of fact: stripped of movement and melody, appreciating architecture is a far more sober pleasure.<\/p>\n

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And here is a sober film \u2014 tricked out in top-notch 3D and backed by no less than Brad Pitt \u2014 that proves easier to describe than to critique. On its own terms, \u201cFrom Inside Out \u2014 The Architecture of Peter Zumthor\u201d succeeds wildly; it\u2019s just that those terms make it about as niche as niche gets. To amend another familiar maxim: beaming about \u201cZumthor\u201d might be the hardest job of all.<\/p>\n

To mark his latest stereoscopic feature, Wenders now brings his camera to\u2026 spaaaaaace! Alas, not the intergalactic variety so memorably honored by that Tim Curry line reading circulating anew, but the no-less-impressive, otherworldly interiors dreamed up by a Swiss-German visionary high in the Alps. Description aside, the unassuming architect is more Opa than Bond villain, which underscores one of the central fascinations of Wenders\u2019 wider foray into the format.<\/p>\n

More than most of his contemporaries, Wenders has shown a deep curiosity about 3D as a filmmaking tool, along with a fierce determination to decouple the gimmick from spectacle \u2014 and thus from contrivance, like a suffix (\u201c\u2026in three-deeee!\u201d) tacked on to justify a premium. He tried it on for a melodrama, falling flat with the largely forgotten James Franco and Rachel McAdams vehicle \u201cEvery Thing Will Be Fine,\u201d and on fine-art appreciation with 2023\u2019s \u201cAnselm,\u201d which grossed nearly three times as much with a far less starry cast. (Must have been the premium format upcharge.)\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom Inside Out \u2014 The Architecture of Peter Zumthor\u201d marks Wenders\u2019 most radical \u2014 and, in a certain way, most relaxed \u2014 experiment to date. Here, the filmmaker uses his stereoscopic tool to simply deepen the image, letting Zumthor\u2019s designs speak for themselves in what amounts to a luxury travelogue channeling the same aesthetic ethos as its subject. Perhaps because Zumthor\u2019s biography isn\u2019t all that extraordinary, the film turns instead to his more sublime work: minimalist, brutalist, often horizontal constructions that sprawl across vast expanses, commenting on and, in Zumthor\u2019s own words, often meant to \u201ccomplete\u201d preexisting natural and urban landscapes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Those long curious about Zumthor\u2019s monumental constructions in Germany and Norway will luxuriate in a film that itself luxuriates and lingers. Those who wouldn\u2019t otherwise plan a European getaway around architectural gawking would be best advised to steer clear.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As it happens, American interest in Zumthor may be higher now than it has ever been (or ever will be) thanks to the recent opening of his David Geffen Galleries in Los Angeles, a design that engulfs Wilshire Boulevard at one end and bubbles up against the La Brea Tar Pits at the other. The curving building famously takes no sides, creating an amorphous open space that is rigidly non-hierarchical, with different cultures, time periods and means of expression sharing the same plane.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Wenders, on the other hand, gives that latest construction the pride of place, devoting the film\u2019s final act to the project\u2019s conception, construction and recent ribbon-cutting, with cameo pop-ins from the likes of Werner and Lena Herzog and Ava DuVernay. Yet future visitors to the David Geffen Galleries, which houses LACMA\u2019s permanent collection, will likely be as interested \u2014 if not more \u2014 in the art on display, underscoring a fundamental tension in a film that hinges on, and in fact requires, a greater fascination with the building itself.\u00a0<\/p>\n

To his credit, the filmmaker recognizes as much. As in a travel show, each new sight comes with its own special guest \u2014 writers and musicians like Siri Hustvedt, Sophie Hunger and Aoi Yamada, brought in to stage a kind of dialogue between performer and place. It\u2019s an interesting, fitfully compelling attempt to \u201copen up\u201d the film by smuggling movement and melody back into the mix. But the effort struggles against headwinds simply too strong, unable to light a spark in a subject whose appeal will inherently remain confined to a self-selecting few.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Then again, what else did you expect? You know what they say about dancing to architecture.<\/p>\n

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