Review: Crazy Horse

Originally reviewed on March 8, 2012.

Most filmgoers will file Crazy Horse, the latest effort from veteran documentarian Frederick Wiseman, right alongside Wim Wenders’ recent Pina in their “I don’t get it” folder. Both films take the routines of well-known dance/performance troupes—though the two couldn’t be more artistically different—and merely observe them at work, providing very little backstory. Wenders implemented a bare-bones style to allow a deceased artist’s work to metaphorically express the essence of her soul; for Wiseman, fly-on-the-wall voyeurism has been a career staple. The problem with the restricted approaches of both films is that if the viewer is not innately interested in the subject matter, there is very little but impressive camerawork to invite them in.

When I said that the show at the Crazy Horse was very different from the ones put on by Pina Bauch’s dancers, I wasn’t lying. For those unfamiliar with the institution (I certainly was, prior to seeing the film), it is an all-nude cabaret club in Paris, where upper-class visitors from around the world come to watch revues packed with elaborate choreography, costumes, and lighting. As far as the Crazy Horse’s supposedly rich history is concerned – Wiseman gives us one shot that could qualify as exposition, where in the corner of the frame there is a placard that reads “since 1951.”

Even though the legacy of the Crazy Horse remains an enigma throughout, most of the film is devoted to non-performance sequences (unlike Pina).  Unless you enter the movie with a pre-existing interest in the subject, however, you’re unlikely to be engrossed by these passages. Werner Herzog’s interviewing skills undoubtedly could have fashioned a nuanced portrait of the cabaret’s manic artistic director, Ali Mahdavi, but in a Wiseman film, he’s just another component of the machine. One gets the sense that Wiseman might be as frustrated by his customary no interviews policy as the audience is, because he includes a long sequence in which Mahdavi speaks with a print journalist about what drew him to the Crazy Horse, essentially farming out the task.

It would seem that what Wiseman is trying to do is explore the day-to-day trials and tribulations of the creative process, but the Crazy Horse seems too unique a place to discover broader truths. (This makes Wiseman’s refusal to deliberately unearth the quirks behind the cast of characters not simply detrimental to the film’s accessibility level, but ironic.) On the same token, the uniqueness of the locale may have offered another filmmaker fodder for contemplating the age-old question of whether these performances actually qualify as art – but again, Wiseman’s limiting style prohibits this.

The only times the film will broadly entertain are the performance sequences, if only due to their sensory titillation. Fueled by vibrant light-filters, mirror images, and plenty of nudity, they are a sight to behold, no matter what one’s judgment as to their artistic substance and eroticism (I’m admittedly cynical about both). Wiseman lovingly photographs the performances through a fitting 1.66:1 frame, lingering on the visual wonders and juxtapositions created by performance director Philippe Decouflé. But, as was the case with Wenders’ Pina, pretty pictures don’t make a complete film, and outside of them, Crazy Horse has very limited appeal.

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