Clash Of `Wills' Is Clash Of Creativity At The Getty

Movie review XXX "Concert of Wills: Making the Getty Center," documentary by Susan Froemke and Bob Eisenhardt, with Albert Maysles. 100 minutes. Grand Illusion. No rating; includes profanity.

If you see one film this year, and you happen to be an architect, make that film is "Concert of Wills." This documentary, shot over 12 years, will actually appeal to a wider audience, namely anyone who has worked with difficult people on a difficult project.

The project in this instance is the mammoth undertaking of the creation of the Getty Center, the richest museum in the world, which opened just over a year ago. Titans of architecture, museum curation, art, art criticism and even landscaping come together . . . and fight. We see that not only does this happen in the workaday world, but it happens with some of the brightest minds of our time. It's so pleasantly gratifying.

The Getty Institute commissions Richard Meier, famed minimalist architect, to design the new facility. The site has already been chosen, a pricey piece of real estate in the Santa Monica mountains of California, not far from Interstate 405. The Getty will be "L.A.'s Acropolis." Immediately, the neighbors step in.

The Brentwood Homeowners Association, at that time ironically concerned about the negative impact the new Getty would have on their reputation, quickly slap 107 conditions on the site and its construction. First and foremost of these restrictions is that neither the color white, nor porcelain enamel, can be used for the exterior of the buildings. As Richard Meier's palette strays mostly toward white, and that porcelain enamel is his favorite medium, it sets the stage for the 12-year war that occurred over the final look and feel of the Getty.

Meier, a brilliant, obsessed, passionate man, invokes the word "white" quite frequently in "Concert," almost like Captain Queeg repeating "strawberries" in "The Caine Mutiny." The legendary architect also sports an omnipresent white shirt, so starchy crisp it looks like you could break a corner off. Meier is up against the Getty curator, John Walsh, a man who throws out appropriate Walt Whitman passages to explain why he's changed his mind. And it becomes painfully clear that Meier and Walsh don't agree on most of the concepts for the building.

At points it seems that the Getty hired Meier, whose architectural style seems at odds with the mostly pre-20th century collection the Getty has, just to torture him. They dismiss him as the interior designer and basically belittle him in meetings. Meier digs in his heels.

When landscape designer Robert Irwin is brought in to rethink the central garden, the resulting meeting reveals that for all their stature and smarts, all these men are basically well-spoken promoters who just want to get their own way.

Architects who have worked with difficult clients will most likely find solidarity with Meier. Homeowners who have tried to describe what they want and are paying architects will no doubt relate to Walsh.The clash of wills is ultimately the entertaining clash of creation.

The final shots of the Getty are astounding. As the principal parties gasp sighs of relief and claim it was all worth it, it's hard not to agree with them.