Aalto: Architect of Emotions

Perhaps too academic and detached a documentary for some, but I fear that in the case of Aalto – a privileged, increasingly withdrawn and egocentric architect – the tendentious method of "success against all odds" would hardly apply. However hard the author tries to weave women's roles into his work. With a wealth of excellent period material and snippets of old interviews to accompany it, the documentary comes across as surprisingly unfulfilled, melancholic, and fatalistic. This is helped by Sanna Salmenkallio's excellent (and very familiar, to connoisseurs of Michael Nyman, for example) score. (12/12/2021)