A man decides to build a stone wall, and another man decides to film the process. It's supposed to take weeks. It takes years. The result, for filmmaker Bill Stone, is Triumph of the Wall, a beautifully shot, meditative, quirky documentary that you can watch online for less than the price of a grande latte, courtesy of Doc Alliance Films. It's not packed with drama, but it's reflective and at times funny, and I found it deeply satisfying overall.
The wall builder, Chris Overing, is a novice, building a 1000-foot wall in rural Quebec for someone whose identity is never revealed, under an arrangement that is never clarified for the viewer. But he is committed to finishing the wall, however long it takes, as the filmmaker is committed to finishing his film, however difficult and uncooperative his subject may be. But what is his subject? It is the wall itself, the builder and the different people who assist him, and other builders he meets in New England and Scotland. And it is also more abstract: commitment, procrastination, work, and the search for meaning.
It got me thinking about my own commitment to a project that has taken far longer than I thought it would, namely my first novel: about how much of a novice I was when I began it years ago; about feeling overwhelmed and struggling to overcome procrastination; about self-discovery through work. I do see the light at the end of the tunnel, though. I feel like I have learned enough to make it a novel worth reading, and to finish the damn thing in the not-too-distant future.
Triumph of the Wall is a film worth seeing—if you like beautifully shot, meditative, quirky, funny, satisfying documentaries, that is. And if you do like it, Doc Alliance Films makes it easy for you to give it as a gift as well, for the documentary film buff on your Christmas list.
It got me thinking about my own commitment to a project that has taken far longer than I thought it would, namely my first novel: about how much of a novice I was when I began it years ago; about feeling overwhelmed and struggling to overcome procrastination; about self-discovery through work. I do see the light at the end of the tunnel, though. I feel like I have learned enough to make it a novel worth reading, and to finish the damn thing in the not-too-distant future.
Triumph of the Wall is a film worth seeing—if you like beautifully shot, meditative, quirky, funny, satisfying documentaries, that is. And if you do like it, Doc Alliance Films makes it easy for you to give it as a gift as well, for the documentary film buff on your Christmas list.