With “Architecton,” the documentary filmmaker Victor Kossakovsky turns his vigorous and ruminative gaze to one of the most used substances on Earth: concrete. If that topic sounds sobering, it is. This transfixing documentary (photographed by Ben Bernard) asks what humans can glean from the epochs when stone, the precursor to concrete, was a go-to building material.
As the film opens, a drone camera pulls back to reveal a number of apartment buildings that have been bombed. (A banner on one declares “Kick Russia Out of Ukraine.”) The film then shifts to a solitary figure considering a megalith in a quarry in Lebanon.
It’s a juxtaposition that speaks to the film’s sweep of philosophical ambition but also betrays a chilliness. A roving dog and a wandering tortoise get cameos. The inhabitants of the decimated cities in Ukraine and earthquake-razed Turkey don’t.
The septuagenarian pondering the slab in Lebanon turns out to be the Italian architect Michele De Lucchi, the film’s other subject. Or perhaps more accurately, its respondent. In a film of few words, he and Kossakovsky have an unexpected conversation near the movie’s end about the role concrete (and by association, architects) play in devouring the planet’s resources and defacing its cities.
Throughout the film, Kossakovsky intercuts his visual reckonings with moments of De Lucchi overseeing the construction of a circle of stone in his garden. Also making appearances: Abdul Nabi al-Afi, a preserver of the Baalbek quarry in Lebanon and the installation artist Nick Steur, who works with stone.
“Architecton” is as gorgeous as it is grave. The score (by Evgueni Galperine) and sound design (by Aleksandr Dudarev) contribute mightily to the film’s heavy lifting.
Architecton
Rated G. In Italian and English with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 38 minutes. In theaters.
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