Keyword Messiaen

The movie captures the responses of 31 authors, musicians, filmmakers and dancers to Olivier Messiaen's monumental organ work "Apparition of the Eternal Church." Listening to the 10-minute piece through headphones, the documentary subjects-most of whom are outsiders to the church and do not know what they're hearing-put Messiaen's project to the test: Is it possible to portray, through time-bound, invisible sound, the spiritual, the architectural, the eternal? The result is a collective interpretation improvising its way through an aesthetic landscape defined by violent contradictions. Resolution abuts eternity, eroticism asceticism, spiritual ecstasy physical torture. Together, the music and its interpreters conjure something like what William Blake famously called the marriage of heaven and hell.

Yvonne Loriod was not only an incredible performer of the music of her time, but also Olivier Messiaen's muse, the one in whom and for whom he found the natural and concrete extension of his art, of his inspiration. This documentary is a beautiful testament to what this great artist represented.