Reviewer's Bias*
Loves:
Likes: Documentaries
Dislikes: Boring movies
Hates: Religious hatred

The Movie
Anyone who's seen Andy Warhol's Empire knows a bit about what it's like to watch Wall. A 485-minute opus in which nothing happens, Empire is an exercise in patience that never, ever rewards the viewer. Literally nothing happens, except in the mind of the viewer, where the experience of watching the Empire State Building for hours, is processed.

Wall is, in many ways, very similar. The conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians is not different at the beginning of the film than it is at the end, and nothing ever really happens during the movie. Letting the camera roll on life, the images are provided to the audience, who make their own judgments and mold their own thoughts about what they are seeing.

The film's main subject, like Empire, is an inanimate structure, the ever-growing defensive wall of concrete around Israel, built to protect the Israeli people from their Palestinian enemies. The people in charge, the people who build it and the people on either side of it, are shown in relation to the slabs of concrete, in an attempt to illustrate the reality of life around the wall. The film seems to try to avoid making judgments, but in its construction, it takes a definite stance, though it is somewhat subtle and thankfully not immediate.

Also like Empire, Wall can be dreadfully boring. I can appreciate the director's effort in creating art while documenting a serious and frustrating situation, but the idea of contemplative art in film has never quite worked for me. Perhaps its something about the frequently comfortable settings most people watch films in, but they don't lend themselves to "boring" movies. During the exhibition of a lengthy experimental film at the National Gallery of Canada, the seats had no backs, forcing those interested to support themselves and maintain personal awareness, making it an active experience.

Here, on one's home sofa, it was easy to nod off as the camera panned the landscape seemingly aimlessly. Such a topic deserved more attention than I was giving, but the delivery method was a sleeping aid, not a educational one.

The DVD
Packed in a standard keepcase with an insert, Wall is a one-disc release. The DVD has an animated full-frame menu, with options to view the film or select chapters. The scene selection menu has still previews for each chapter, while the disc has no audio options and no closed captioning, though you can turn the English subtitles on and off.

The Quality
The anamorphic widescreen transfer looks every bit like a digitally shot documentary, displaying a somewhat soft, with a lower level of detail, while the color is a bit duller than expected. Video noise and blurring during scenes with much movement is found throughout the film. Some scenes are better than others, but even at its best, its no better than the local TV news, only in widescreen.

The Dolby Digital 2.0 soundtrack is clear and distortion free, but truthfully, unless you speak Hebrew or Arabic, that won't really matter. When English is spoken, which happens perhaps once, it's a bit tough to understand, but that's the accent, not the recording. The natural sound and infrequent music are well reproduced also.

The Extras
There are no extras included on this release.

The Bottom Line
I'd like to think I'm capable of a deeper level of thought than "Which Police Academy do I want to watch?" Then I watch a movie like Wall and realize, at heart, I am no better than the next Joe Six-Pack. My mind feels abused when faced with contemplative films like this, stories without plots, movies without stories. I like art, but I don't like it when it feels like art for art's sake. There's a reason why many filmmakers don't make a career outside of film school, and its an inability to tell a story. If this film was cut down to only its first scene, it would be an award-worthy short. Instead, it's an overlong indulgence. The DVD doesn't support the film in anyway, and it's unlikely to appeal to most people reading this review.

Follow him on Twitter

*The Reviewer's Bias section is an attempt to help readers use the review to its best effect. By knowing where the reviewer's biases lie on the film's subject matter, one can read the review with the right mindset.