La Danse: The Paris Opera Ballet

Frederick Wiseman is a grand dean of documentary filmmakers, a skilled observer whose patient, incessant, journalistic omniscience explores, exposes and dissects the folly of institutional life.

"Titicut Follies" (1967) looked at the treatment of the criminally insane.

"The Store" (1983) offered a fascinating, inside look at Neiman-Marcus in Dallas.

His camera moves in and shoots his subjects objectively, but the results are often damning. That's by no means the case, however, with "La Danse: The Paris Opera Ballet," his glimpse inside the renowned company and its world at the Palais Garnier.

Now 79, Wiseman seems more in the mood of an elegist. "La Danse" boasts Wiseman's detached, matter-of-fact cinematic observation, from thrilling moments in rehearsal to bland, antiseptic ones chronicling costumers stitching or cafeteria workers serving up fare. But "La Danse" is a paean to an enterprise one suspects Wiseman deeply respects and maybe loves.

Often slow, at times monotonous and numbingly straightforward, "La Danse" is nevertheless a serenade of a bone-breaking art as enacted by great practitioners, a documentary illustrating choreographer Maurice Bejart's piquant definition of the ballet dancer quoted in the dialogue: half nun and half boxer.

There are some choice bits. Two aged veterans caustically debate a particular innovation of George Balanchine as if he were a callous, youthful upstart. A choreographer and two dancers analyze "Medea" by comparisons to "X-Men" and "Edward Scissorhands" -- pop movies as tragic motivation. Brigitte Lefebvre, the troupe's dogged artistic director, recalls Bejart's memorial service, performance art itself from the sounds of it. During plans for fund raising from upscale donors, Lehman Brothers comes up as an important funder -- a reminder that documentaries age quickly and that the dependence of art on patrons can be treacherously fragile.

At 2 1/2 hours, "La Danse" is too long, and some of Wiseman's methods seem dated in an era of quick-payoff reality TV: lingering shots of hallways or views of Paris, though he thankfully eschews the Eiffel Tower. But those willing to while away time in its images will find reward in Wiseman's down-to-earth look at godlike people, his focus on such wondrous dancers as Aurelie Dupont and Nicholas Le Riche, and his beautifully filmed excerpts of such classics as "Paquita" and such thorny innovations as Mats Ek's "House of Bernarda Alba."

 

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"La Danse: The Paris Opera Ballet" Movie Trailer

 

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No MPAA rating.

Running time: 2:38.

Featuring: dancers of the Paris Opera Ballet.

Credits: Directed by Frederick Wiseman, produced by Pierre-Olivier Bardet and Wiseman. A Zipporah Films release.