“Architecton” Reflects on Architecture

Architecton (Victor Kossakovsky, 2024) 3½ out of 5 stars 

From documentarian Victor Kossakovsky (Gunda) comes an elliptical film that unites seemingly disparate sequences via a common theme. Described in its press notes as “an extraordinary journey through the material that makes up our habitat: concrete, and its ancestor, stone,” Architecton features Kossakovsky’s usual array of gorgeous images drawing cinematic power from the way they are carefully edited together. If, by the end, the result proves more ascetic than aesthetic, the meditative quality of the experience nevertheless leaves a lasting impression.

The movie begins with a quote from Italian poet Giovanni Pascoli: “There is something new within the Sun today / Or rather, ancient.” Another Italian, the architect Michele De Lucci, plays a principal role in the narrative, complaining about the overuse of concrete in modern construction (though admitting to his own use of it) while overseeing the creation of a stone circle in his garden that will, in his words, “last a lifetime.” As we cut to and from the operation, Kossakovsky shows other stones in a variety of shapes, sizes, and uses.

Particularly evocative are the frequent shots of exploding rocks, many of which come from within quarries. At first we take them for avalanches, photographed in slow motion, but their constant reappearance reveals the depth of Kossakovsky’s obsession with how such an ostensibly hard material can be crushed and transformed. The many iterations of this motif provide context to De Lucci’s musings on the past, present, and future of his profession.

There is an occasional playfulness here, as well, such as when we watch a beagle (perhaps another kind of hound) run through both ancient ruins and more modern structures. Sometimes the picture is black and white, though most of the time it vibrates in different colors (there isn’t always a clear reason why the one or the other, though whatever is there intrigues). Humanity’s structures and processes for building those structures stand out in sharp relief against the unceasing march forward of history.

The lead workman in charge of De Lucci’s lawn project states the idea quite plainly, that they are “finding the circle while making the circle.” This is our species’ general plan: to learn by doing. What does it mean, though, when we have unlearned the lessons of previous generations? Where once we erected magnificent monuments to our ingenuity, we now settle for the merely functional. And yet we are capable of framing the truth as we see it in such a starkly beautiful manner. Architecture may suffer, but Architecton holds promise.

Christopher Llewellyn Reed

Chris Reed is the editor of Film Festival Today. A member of both the Online Film Critics Society (OFCS) and the Washington DC Area Film Critics Association (WAFCA), and a Rotten Tomatoes-approved film critic, Chris is, in addition, lead film critic at Hammer to Nail and the author of Film Editing: Theory and Practice.