Chuck Close (2007)

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Chuck Close travels into the world of one of the late 20th and early 21st century's most highly singular visual artists. The eponymous subject of the title opted, early on, to exclusively devote all of his time and creative energy to constructing massive human likenesses, "deconstructed" into enlarged photographs, self-portraits, images from other artists, and a host of other ephemera. From a close vantage point, the overall image can be neither discerned nor detected, but when one stands at a considerable distance, the smaller components "coalesce" into a fluid whole. As documentarist Marion Cajori subtly reminds the audience time and again, the most astonishing aspect of Close's artistic construction (especially given the photo shoots, image selection, and other elements that go into the process) involves his 20 year physical paralysis. The central narrative of Cajori's film witnesses Close's construction of one such portrait (with the help of many assistants) over an 80+ day period; she also works in footage from a biographical sketch of Close that she shot in 1998, clips of the artist and his colleagues, and a number of additional sources - hence mirroring, in the creation of her own biographical portrait of Close, the process by which Close creates a new work of art. Chuck Close also represents the final cinematic work of acclaimed documentarist Cajori, who died shortly after editing this motion picture; it took her 13 years to complete, from 1993 to 2006. ~ Nathan Southern, Rovi