”If you’re a complete layman, what’s all the fuss about Frank Gehry?” To answer this question, film director Sidney Pollack decided to make his first documentary.

A.O. Scott of the New York Times says: “Sketches of Frank Gehry respects the enigma of its subject as it illuminates his ways of thinking about form, space and construction. This modest documentary offers glimpses of the architect and visits his major work rather than [being] a full-scale catalogue raisonné [which] . . . seems apt since Mr. Gehry’s buildings, with their folded surfaces and off-center interiors, are impossible to take in all at once. They
originate as doodles and assemblages of cardboard and tape, eventually [arriving at] their final incarnation in glass and titanium, and it is fascinating to watch this metamorphosis take place.”

At one point, when Gehry expresses envy for painters’ abilities to achieve visual effects, Pollack cuts to an amazing montage of buildings, their surfaces exquisitely reflecting sunlight, absorbing rain and lifting their surroundings into the realm of art.