Coming to virtual cinemas tomorrow, Friday, February 5:
MC ESCHER: JOURNEY TO INFINITY
Director:
Robin Lutz
World Premiere:
Dutch theatrical release (April 2018)
Select Festivals:
Vancouver, Architecture & Design, Nederlands, New Zealand
About:
A biographical celebration of the famed Dutch artist and would-be mathematician.
Working off of MC Escher’s own proclamation that the only person in the world who could make a film about his work was Escher himself, filmmaker Robin Lutz structures this tribute around the artist’s own words, voiced here by Stephen Fry. While there are a select few other commentators, notably Escher’s surviving children, the film is absent the perspectives of art world experts – a curious omission, given the project’s advocacy that Escher should be considered a high-art figure rather than a popular graphic designer. Instead, Escher, via Fry, guides us through his life history, the inspiration and development of his work through his travels and amateur interest in mathematics, and how he found fame, even if he was miffed by the mass marketing and colorization of his prints by hippies in the 1960s. Though the doc can feel at times like a dry PBS portrait, as a whole, it’s engaging enough, thanks to the curiosity and visual appeal of Escher’s prints.
