Bohemian Rhapsody

摘要

James Crump, the intrepid director, writer, and art historian, has done the impossible, crafting a smart, serious architecture documentary that isn't hopelessly dry and boring. His latest film, Breuer's Bohemia, takes an incisive look into the roiling cultural milieu in which Marcel Breuer crafted some of his most groundbreaking residential projects. It's a tale of inspiration and decadence, rife with heavy drinking and free love, all set against a backdrop of leftist politics and social iconoclasm incubated in the seemingly staid suburban outposts of Connecticut and Massachusetts."It's a real-life version of Frank Perry's The Swimmer meets Ang Lee's The Ice Storm. The wild stories of Breuer and his circle of friends and advocates have all the necessary dramatic tension required for a film," says Crump, who, in 2017, acquired the architect's landmark Stillman House Ⅱ in Litchfield, Connecticut, with his wife, Ronnie Sassoon, the documentary's producer. "I wanted to explore the complex ways that Breuer's architecture collided with the private lives of his patrons, how these houses both embodied and rejected the Utopian ambitions of modernism," the director continues, describing the triumph of Breuer's residential masterpieces as well as their underbelly of heartache and dysfunction.