English Movie 2009 If One Thing Matters;
A Film About Wolfgang Tillmans
Cast
Wolfgang Tillmans
Irm Hermann
Pet Shop Boys .
Director:Heiko Kalmbach
Writers:Heiko Kalmbach (script)
Alexander Pfeuffer (script consultant)
Release Date:18 September 2009 (USA)
Genre:Documentary
Reviews
Wolfgang Tillmans makes his breakfast. He waters the plants, hops on the subway, meticulously hangs prints at a gallery. For four years, Heiko Kalmbach shadowed the German photographer who rose to fame through spontaneous shots of late-night club life and common places. Following the subject’s cue, the director remains at a distance, trying to glimpse the creative process through the fleeting moments of Tillmans’s daily routines.
But the risk of such hands-off filmmaking is that the narrative itself can become mired in the mundane; there’s little that happens here to shed light on the way this renowned shutterbug works or thinks. In fact, outside a brief foray into directing (for a Pet Shop Boys music video), Tillmans’s life apparently involves very little artistry at all. This might be Kalmbach’s central point—being a celebrity allows almost no time for creativity—but his refusal to question anything leaves even that thread unrealized. Tillmans’s photos may be observational, but even he makes the difficult decisions of what to crop and which shots deserve public viewing. That curatorial heft is sorely missing from Kalmbach’s final edit; it’s a portrait that neither feels forced nor fully formed.—
In the 1990s, Wolfgang Tillmans made a name for himself with photos of parties and club life. Today he is one of the most famous photographers in the world. Filmmaker Heiko Kalmbach accompanied Tillmans for four years. The result is a personal portrait featuring impromptu interviews and documentation of the immediate experience of Tillmans' work process. 'If One Thing Matters - a film about Wolfgang Tillmans' is a search for the core of an influential artist's practice.
Heiko Kalmbach, another would-be DVCam Vasari, has produced an artist documentary that's best when its subject, a German-born, London-based photographer, isn't addressing the camera. The title abbreviates "If One Thing Matters, Everything Matters," Wolfgang Tillmans's Tate exhibition, which represents the platitudes that he falls back on when discussing his work ("If you put in a little bit of effort, it does turn out better"; "Stuff that's thought up will always just be thought-up stuff"). The footage, gathered from shoots between 2000 (when Tillmans won England's Turner Prize) and 2003, shows him filling the appointments of a world-famous gallery icon. With the accustomed self-confidence born of early success—he was a club kid wunderkind—and impressive stature, Tillmans is introduced re-editing a print interview (a bit diva-ish, that). Subsequently, he'll hang a wall-size piece with the help of three handlers and three forklifts, win a succession of courtiers and sycophants with his sharp, triangular grin, and dilettantishly fumble out a music video assignment for the Pet Shop Boys. A shoot with Fassbinder actress Irm Hermann signifies Tillmans's desire—and the desire of every high-profile German-speaking artist (hello, Fatih Akin)—to huff the fading smell of RWF's genius. Like the rest of the film, though, it does little to convince the unconverted of Tillmans's own.
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