Movie Review: Pina

The 3D in Pina used to great effect in the dance performances. Photo / Supplied

A confession: I've never been a great fan of dance, whose appeal I have often found more athletic than aesthetic. And I have tended to think of 3D something of a gimmick, a piece of technical whizz-bangery that was separate to, rather than integrated with, the film in which is was employed.

Werner Herzog's Cave of Forgotten Dreams proved a conspicuous exception to the latter rule, and now another German maestro, Wenders, has completely persuaded me - about both dance and 3D.

This film started life as a documentary about an illustrious, not to say revered, German choreographer Pina Bausch, whose Wuppertal Tanztheater (Dance Theatre) is legendary. When the subject died in June 2009, only five days after being diagnosed with cancer, the project was reconfigured as a work in her honour, performed by her students and acolytes.

Wenders' camera moves among and around the dancers as they perform four of the company's signature pieces (including a striking, bleak The Rite of Spring, on a stage covered with a layer of peat) and a variety of smaller vignettes, some consisting of no more than a single idea, brilliantly executed.

It's important to mention that this is a dance film for the dance-averse: "Dance begins where words end," we hear Bausch say at one point and the work on show radiantly confirms the truth of that. The pieces draw on the traditions of the acrobat, the mime, the actor and the dancer and, excitingly they are staged in a variety of locations - the tiled edge of a swimming pool; a traffic island; an abandoned underground railway - as well as on stage.

Crucially, the 3D has a haunting visual allure. So often it doesn't look real, but hyperreal, less like life than like ... 3D cinema. Here it works perfectly, hauling us into the space so effectively that the result is naturalistic; effect disappears and the illusion is complete.

The performance scenes are interpolated with the dancers' reminiscences about what Bausch - who seems to have functioned as something between an enchantress and a Zen master - meant to them, which disrupts the spell somewhat. But for the most part the film - unquestionably the best thing I've seen in 3D - takes us completely into its world. It's an unforgettably enthralling experience.

Stars: 4.5/5
Documentary Director: Wim Wenders
Running time: 103 mins
Rating: PG In various languages with English subtitles
Verdict: Enthralling

-TimeOut