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Pina

"Dance, dance, otherwise we are lost."
   
These words of departed choreographer Pina Bausch, for whom this documentary is titled (and to whom it is dedicated), reveal something of her philosophy concerning her art: dance, apparently, is an essential part of our shared human experience. The quote also suggests how definitively dance informed her own sense of purpose.
   
Perhaps it’s thus appropriate that Pina, directed by celebrated German director Wim Wenders (Wings of Desire), focuses so resolutely on her actual work and the dancers she collaborated with. It’s unfortunate, however, that Wenders fails to string these elements together in a more compelling, frankly interesting form — or give us a greater, more detailed understanding of Bausch’s working theories. It’s even more unfortunate he inexplicably decided to present the film in underwhelming 3-D.
   
The movie is finally just rather boring. We meet former student after former student of Bausch’s, sharing various memories and performing various pieces, but it all finally starts to bleed together; Wenders only occasionally devotes the time to allow sections to develop appropriate density, while others seemingly rush by onscreen.
   
Some, for that matter, are just not terribly inspiring. Nor is it all made to feel compellingly tied together. And the film goes on interminably.
   
Then there is the matter of the 3-D, which sort of works sometimes, lending a heightened, surreal (or perhaps hyper-real) quality to certain moments. But the characteristic muddying of the image, courtesy of those ridiculous glasses, negates whatever benefits might otherwise have been accrued. As with so many other 3-D films, what we are mostly paying for is the pleasure of having a double image made single.
   
If one can ignore the (unsurprisingly, by this time) lacklustre 3-D, the film does include insights that may make the merely casually familiar better appreciate dance. On the most basic level, the art offers joy in seeing performers, like world-class athletes, do things with their bodies we intuitively understand are incredibly hard to do.
   
What Bausch understood was the joy to be found in physical movement, even asking one of her former dancers to present something that expressed the very sentiment. It’s hence no wonder that the multitude of former artists featured speak of Bausch with great admiration and affection.
   
Indeed, it would seem she brought out the best in her dancers — she saw things they were afraid to be, or to even attempt. One says that everything he wanted or tried to be disappeared under her gaze; she saw her artists as they never dared see themselves. She seemingly lived vicariously through them, yet also nonetheless still used them for her own creative ends, as "paint" to "colour her images."
   
As for her choreography itself, it’s often arresting in its strength, boldness and emotional quality. But how much better might we have appreciated it, had Wenders better communicated what processes went into it, exactly. We learn so little about the title subject otherwise, Pina might have at least done a more comprehensive job of portraying her as an artist.