Mur murs

It's a documentary of murals in Los Angeles. It's roller-skaters, local folks, and the various murals. It's a nice time capsule. It's an interesting path to drive down and investigate the local communities. It has interviews with some of the artists. I would like time-elapsed montages of the artists working on their murals. It's nice to hear from these unknown artists.

The French director Agnes Varda spent a couple of different years in Los Angeles, and this particular year produced her documentary "Murs, murs" and her fiction film "Documenteur". The title means "Walls, walls", but also puns with the word "murmurs." Varda located dozens of murals around LA and filmed them. Many of these are gone today, so this is a true documentary, documenting a wonderful aspect of southern Californian visual culture. She interviews the artists, a truly multicultural and multicolored group--and shows the paintings in their urban contexts. One memorable scene shows a mural at Venice Beach with young people dancing in front of it (probably near where their sons and daughters are roller skating or skateboarding now). An enjoyable movie by a European with deep aesthetic appreciation for marvelous, imaginative, colorful imagery that was considered throwaway pop culture at the time.

Perhaps Varda's most relaxed film, this tone poem or love letter or colorful greeting card, depending on your mood, to the murals of 1980s Los Angeles, with its focus on East LA and Venice, is the perfect movie to watch if you find that you've been imbibing too much Woody Allen or Joan Didion and desire an antidote to those dour, veteran LA haters. Or just if you're a fan of street art. Or if, like me, you were born in the city of Angels and have never really left it, both physically and psychically. So, yeah, I'm biased but I just loved it. Wished it could have gone on for another half hour, at least. And shame on my home town's civic leaders for allowing too many of these gems to be destroyed. Give it an A minus.

I love street art and I love Agnès Varda, so this was heaven for me. There is such purity in the artwork from the streets of 1980 Los Angeles shown here - representing the underrepresented, living outside the world of galleries and collectors, and the inherent transience of the pieces. There is a purity to Varda as well, and how organically she let the artists tell their stories speaks volumes about her humanity. There are moments I wish had gotten a little less attention, like the slaughterhouse mural, but there are also moments that took my breath away, like the "teachers, please don't give up on me ... I am somebody" artwork in the Compton Jr. High School, or the artist talking about finding his brother lying in a pool of blood as the backdrop to one of his works. Varda gives it all to us without judgement, and that's part of the beauty of what she created.

Agnès Varda may be a French director, but her work in L.A. is easily some of her best. Mur Murs is an incredible documentary, filming and preserving not only the mural art (some of it paid commercial art, some of it commissioned, and some of it illegal) that is all around L.A. but interviewing the artists as well and finding out the touching and interesting reasons why people turn to this art form.

It's a very spare documentary, despite the interviews there is not a lot of talking, and the majority of the time the camera is busy filming the murals and people walking in front of it.

It's a wonderful outsiders look at something that the people who live there must take for granted, but as someone who has never visited Los Angeles I appreciated the look into this beautiful art form.