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The Lobby (Heinz Emigholz, 2020)
🕑 Added 2020-09-27 03:07:59 +0000 UTC
It's weird. Streetscapes [Dialogue] was such a tonic precisely because, after so many years of silently walking us through some of the world's most important buildings, Emigholz suddenly burst forth with a million ideas about the world, the self, human consciousness, sexuality, cinema, the works. It's somehow not as satisfying seeing him till this same ground again, as though this heady logorrhea represents his new, dominant style.
The Lobby is essentially a monologue by a "character" called Old White Male (John Erdman), edited to sound as though it is a nonstop theatrical presentation, despite the fact the Emigholz's camerawork and framing is continually fragmenting space, and also moving OWM effortless among many different lobbies in many different well-appointed office buildings in Buenos Aires. This waiting-room trope, we're to understand, reflects the fact that OWM is "dead," or at least he will be by the time we watch the film. (He repeatedly delineates the cinematic disphasure between the time of filming and the time of viewing.)
OWM has many complaints. He hates embodiment, thinks we the living don't understand the true meaning of Death, seems to have some problems with women (although he claims to have been quite the Lothario), and although he had several friends over the years, they too are all dead. As a piece of theater, The Lobby is very much like a mediocre riff on the plays of Wallace Shawn (especially The Fever), and its cinematic interventions, while skillful, reflect Emigholz operating at a level of basic competence. This will be a footnote in a distinguished career. It happens.
