Ex Libris

Borges said:  "I have always imagined paradise will be a kind of library."  Ample justification for this vision may be found in Frederick Wiseman's remarkably cheerful and fascinating documentary Ex Libris (2017).  This film, an institutional study of the New York Public Library, is built on an epic scale -- the movie is 197 minutes long.  However, it wears its length well and, in fact, is sufficiently interesting, and, even, inspiring enough to avoid tedium.  In fact, the activities of the library are so immense and variegated that, if anything, the film doesn't exactly seem to do them justice -- it could easily be another hour long without losing its peculiar charm.  Some sequences, indeed, feel too short -- there is one scene in which a man in a wheelchair inserts some kind of card in a cassette box and, then, flings the cassettes into a big bin; the man works with astonishing speed and hurls the cassettes as if he is angry at them -- Wiseman eschews names, music, narration, and makes no use of explanatory titles:  he is a purist and presents his images as if unmediated and, so, this sequence, an episode in the huge film that is very interesting and, in fact, departs a little from the idyllic tone of the rest of the movie, remains enigmatic:  who is this man?  what is his actual mood?  and what the hell is he doing?  Why is he working so fast?  There is no explanation of this sequence and so we are left to our own imaginative devices, an interesting approach to documentary filmmaking, but one that is, sometimes, a little frustrating.  Although Wiseman presents his movies, almost all of them institutional studies, as the simple, unvarnished truth, in fact, they are highly complex, and carefully contrived, artifices -- Wiseman spends much more time editing than shooting his films and, of course, carefully controls what we see.  His vision of the institution that he documents is concealed, but, nonetheless, forcefully evident across the length of the film.  In contrast with some of his subjects, for instance his film simply entitled High School, Wiseman has unalloyed affection for New York's vast public library system and this is on fulsome display in this movie.

One of the pleasures of watching Wiseman's films is that gradually, over hours, characters emerge.  We see the same people, none of them ever identified, and, gradually, build up a sense for their personalities and quirks.  Similarly, Wiseman tethers Ex Libris to a sort of loose structure by sequences that punctuate his material -- these are shots of the iconic façade and entrance hall to the main library facility that seems to be at 5th Avenue and 41st Street.  Every fifteen minutes or so, the film reverts to this location, shot at all hours of the day, and we see tourists on the steps taking selfies of themselves in front of the library's famous portico.  We also see tourists in Astor Hall, the entry way to the library, milling about, taking photographs, and sometimes attending noon time presentations by famous writers -- everyone, including the presenter, stands for these talks.  At dawn, the camera shows street people sleeping in the shadow of the building.  The famous lions flanking the entrance to the library first appear about two hours into the film although they are on ubiquitous in stylized forms on flags shown at the various branches of the library that the film explores -- the film tutors us to recognize the red and white flag as the sign for a branch library.  As the film progresses, periodically, we see members of its governing body, people who perpetually proclaim that the library succeeds by its "public and private partnerships", a mantra for the notion that the more the library shows its benevolent public face, that is, the more people it serves, the more private philanthropists will donate to the library.  The impulse in the film is to show that the library is a powerful, behemoth force for good and that it inspires good in others.  To this end, we see a tired-looking blonde woman who seems to be one of the library's executives -- she presides over various meetings, including several in branches serving poor neighborhoods.  A very dignified Black woman with a shaved head seems to have something to do with the Schomburg Center, a Harlem archive associated with the library -- she almost never speaks but is a powerful presence in the administrative scenes.  A number of handsome younger men appear as well, more or less indistinguishable from one another -- they are up and coming administrators and hustlers.   With one exception (an U.S. army recruiting officer), everyone in the film speaks with fantastic, unscripted eloquence -- there are many marvelous, hyper-literate speeches in the film including a marvelous Ph.d-level dissertation on Marxism and the criticism of bourgeois society from the right (the works of ... Slaves without Masters) delivered by a brilliantly eloquent American Indian woman -- she's chubby, wears gaudy silver jewelry, and seems to be speaking to a group of elderly Jewish and Chinese people at a Branch library and, I'm persuaded, that she's about the most intelligent person you and I will hear speak during the next dozen or so calendar months. 

The movie is encyclopedic like the library that it documents.  We see Richard Dawkins pontificating about science and religion, pointing out that the endeavor of knowledge is cooperative (and, therefore, establishing from the outset Wiseman's theme).  A brilliant Black scholar speaks on the Koran and the Atlantic slave trade.  There is a Job Fair, a half-dozen board meetings of the governors of the library (more talk of the public-private partnership),a sequence in which librarians at an after-school day care teach children how to read, images of micro-fiche being made and used, fifteen minutes in the archives of the world's largest copy-right free picture library, a Jewish scholar discussing delicatessens and the sexual symbolism of pastrami and salami.  Elvis Costello in an interview, undercuts one of Greil Marcus' more elaborate theories and presents an image of his father on TV performing "If I had a Hammer," a highlight in the movie.  An older Black poet speaks and we see several chamber ensembles performing in an auditorium associated with the library branch in Lincoln Center.  Old Chinese men read Hong Kong newspapers in the Chinatown branch, old Jews discuss Marquez's Love in the Time of Cholera in a book club, and librarians teach the blind how to read braille (Wiseman cuts away to a service dog licking its genitals).  Ta-Nehisi Coates delivers a spectacular poetry reading and a sign language interpreter shows how she imports emotion into her "signing" at plays and musicals on Broadway.  We see conveyor belts sorting books from the circulation library and snapping them into bins to be delivered to the various branches; a little girl tries to get a library card and the head of the custodians delivers a report on physical plant improvements.  The library loans out hot spot electronics and lap tops and the administrators debate e-books and the role of bestsellers in the collection.  Scholars study handwritten letters by Yeats and William Burroughs and a curator shows a group of old people wonderful woodcuts and engravings by Durer and Rembrandt.  Administrators discuss policies toward the homeless -- the homeless are not allowed to sleep in the library, but the film, then, shows us a montage of all sorts of people napping in the reading rooms.  At a lecture, Patti Smith says that history also includes dreams and visions and mistakes. Teenagers use a Branch as a hang-out and an actor recites Nabokov's Laughter in the Dark for an audio book.  More old men are sleeping in a serene, silent branch near a green park.  The great and wealthy gather in a banqueting hall lit by luminaria (brown paper bags with candles in them) for a fundraiser.  The tired-looking blonde lady is dolled-up and looks about fifteen years younger. 

Carnegie's bequest to America was that no one should live farther from a public library than they can walk -- this is the core of the so-called "public private" relationship to public services that the film espouses.  At one point, a woman says that "the library must not fail" and, for a moment, the quotidian seems majestic and heroic.  The head librarian, the tired-looking blonde woman, finds out that the most checked-out resource by local educators is the file on "Baby Animals" -- "everyone loves baby animals," a cheerful Black librarian says, but she points that both parents and children have made the second-most checked-out resource materials on fractions.  There are patterns artfully woven into the film -- in the first five minutes someone asks an information librarian about the Gutenberg Bible.  A half hour before the film ends, we see the Gutenberg Bible on display.  I'm sure there are other motifs that reoccur, but on first watching the film is so long and complex that it is hard to appreciate the movie's structural underpinnings.

Wiseman is 89 now -- he was 87 when he directed this astonishingly youthful and optimistic film.  Unlike Ken Burns, a filmmaker that I dislike, Wiseman is America's cinematic Whitman -- this film is a vast and inspiring catalogue of good things.  Of course, it's not true -- Wiseman doesn't show homeless people being escorted out of toilets by security.  The Board meetings that he films are preternaturally calm and harmonious.  No one gets angry.  There are no quarrels and no disputes as to the library's function, which, in effect, seems to be universal.  The New York that Wiseman shows is sunny, clean, filled with ultra-articulate and super-smart people.  There is no ethnic tension, no disputes between labor and management, no debate about objectives, nothing even approximating racism.  This is a wonderful film that depicts an idealized version of the American community -- in the age of Trump, such a work is salubrious and it should be seen by everyone.  The film is a fiction, but it's not a mean-spirited or bitter fiction. I hope that Wiseman's generosity of spirit is somehow contagious.