Wim Wenders gives Pina Bausch’s dances the space and attention they deserve in a moving film. The affectionate interviews interrupt the pleasure and offer newcomers too little help with the woman behind the work.
Pina is a moving dance film that gives newcomers too little help with the woman behind the work. Wim Wenders puts his faith in the performances, giving them enough space to justify the attention even if dance is not usually what we choose for an evening. The dancers make that faith look sensible. The trouble comes when their recollections have to tell us who Pina Bausch was, because affection alone supplies little explanation.
Hélène Louvart and Jörg Widmer use 3D to make the distance between performers readable, so that movement has somewhere to travel. It is easier to register a body’s weight when we can see the space it occupies. The static framing is particularly valuable: it lets us look across an image without being hurried towards whichever detail the camera has selected. We were moved by the dancers’ physical effort. Being given time to watch them within the frame, rather than constantly having our attention redirected, made that effort harder to take for granted.
The outdoor staging gives the dancing a welcome change of surroundings. Away from a theatre, the movements acquire a strangeness that makes them absorbing; familiar human bodies start doing things an ordinary setting does not prepare us for. There is pleasure in simply looking, and the film allows that without insisting that every movement be translated into a message. The ensemble’s commitment keeps these passages from feeling like decorative excursions, and the performances hold our attention without needing an accompanying explanation.
Toni Froschhammer’s editing faces a harder problem in the movement between dance and recollection. Each return to the interviews asks us to shift from watching the work to listening to people describe its importance, and the rhythm repeatedly slackens. Their devotion is clear well before the film has finished establishing it. Some of this testimony matters, but the repetition makes us wish the director had been less reluctant to trim affectionate material.
Thomas Hanreich’s music helps sustain the mood across these changes, though it cannot make the spoken passages as absorbing as the dancing. Our attention stays with the performers, which is the right order of priorities for a film so dependent on their presence. Against the usual expectations of an arts documentary, the relative scarcity of explanation is initially refreshing. It is possible to enjoy the choreography without already knowing where it belongs in dance history.
Pina Bausch appears in archive footage, but her personal life and reasons for making the work remain largely unexplored. That need not disqualify a film built around performance, yet it leaves the reminiscences with too little to add to what we can already see. We wanted more about how the work was made and fewer assurances of its importance. The reverence sometimes makes the subject harder to understand, particularly for anyone meeting her work through this film.
Approach it as an encounter with the dances and there is much to enjoy. Expect a rounded account of their maker and the omissions will bother you. An existing interest in dance will help, but curiosity is enough. Give it a large screen and some undivided attention; this is a poor choice for an evening spent checking a phone.
