DN:FIILM Christo - Walking On Water

Director Andrey Paounov takes full advantage of intimate access to create an intriguing document that testifies to the alchemy of artistic creation, the endurance of vision and the fierce vitality of its characters in WALKING ON WATER.

Christo, who with his wife and artistic partner Jeanne-Claude, has created some of the best-known, epic environmental art installations of modern times—among them Running Fence in California, Wrapped Reichstag in Berlin, and The Gates in Central Park—is here working on the planning, installation and presentation of a long-gestating project, The Floating Piers. Jeanne-Claude and Christo began development of this installation in 1970 but could never get it approved during Jeanne-Claude’s lifetime; she died in 2009, and her absence hangs over the film and the project in a touching way; Christo refers to her repeatedly and her image appears from time to time, and you never get the impression that the artist isn’t on some level bereft to be working solo, even as he builds what is in essence a testament to his late partner’s memory.

Not that he’s moping around, or lonely: The elfin octogenarian’s energy is unlimited, whether it’s channeled toward a full-on charm offensive targeting fancy types at a cocktail gathering, directed toward New York City students whose class Christo visits (where he does hilarious, Clouseau-esque battle with a Smart Board; he emerges victorious); or expressed in his shouting out disgust and dismay at the various idiocies he has to work around once The Floating Piers project—3 km of fabric arranged across Italy’s Lake Iseo, so that one has the experience of walking on water—is being installed and, later, enjoyed by hundreds of thousands of visitors. Notable is Christo's assistant and nephew, an intimidating, sunglass-wearing enforcer, who pivots from tending to his uncle in lovely ways—how often do you get to watch living legends having their eyelashes trimmed?—to playing hardball with local authorities and hangers-on (a standout passage involves an art buyer trying to get last month’s pricing for today’s (much more limited) inventory—good luck!). He’s the grounded counterbalance to Christo’s free-floating dreamer; it comes across as an effective dynamic and one suffused with both respect and affection.

Such goodwill seems to surround Christo, appropriately for an unbowed artist who claims that the his and Jeanne-Claude’s work was and remains only about joy and delight, done for no other reason than that they wanted to do it. Paounov captures that ethos and enthusiasm, along with a collection of effective, patient, gorgeous shots of the inherently ephemeral work itself. The combination of the epic and the intimate well serves the artistry, and the audience.