Concert of Wills: Making the Getty Center

If Love Is the Devil is like watching a painting dry, Concert of Wills, Albert Maysles and company's documentary about the 14-year process behind the making of LA's monumental Getty Center for the arts, might be likened to watching concrete harden. Fortunately, the process is much more engrossing and rewarding. Meticulously recording the clashes in ideas, interpretations, and details of this project, from the first neighborhood meetings over zoning to the final touches of decor, the film mirrors the architectural process in its frustrations, its synthesis, and its final realization. The artist in this case is modernist architect Richard Meir, who resembles Santa Claus combined with a Roman emperor. Meir is mostly in imperial mode as he clashes with Brentwood residents concerned about the billion-dollar extravaganza planned for a hilltop in their neighborhood. They're dead set against the use of white enamel, Meir's trademark. Other differences arise between Meir and Getty officials who object to such touches as placing a wall-sized window in an auditorium to be used for films and slide shows. Although much of the drama takes place in stark offices over drafting tables, with intermittent shots of the construction's progress, the creative tension, compromise, and resolution remain coherent and palpable. And the end result is worth the effort -- the finished complex, shown in a breathtaking montage of galleries and vistas, is, as one critic puts it, the Acropolis of Los Angeles.

-- Peter Keough