Here’s a greater Pole than Chopin, without a doubt. Art is amazing, but let’s keep things in perspective here!
There they go again, concisely saying a ton, because the clear cataloguing of the historical events is so enhanced by their spectacular selection and presentation of artifacts. The biographical details are lovely, and they add up to an essential, healthful lesson: great intelligence, applied through consistent and long-suffering industry, changes the world. The film’s various framed objects say that, and more; there’s a vast, palpable sensuousness in the things that the Eames are assembling before us here, and that they quite properly and joyfully celebrate. Ink on textured paper, exquisite handwriting, the miracle of the printing press (shown for what it represented, but also for the mere/amazing materiality of inks pressed on pages); calculations and astronomical models and astrolabes, a brief account of the guy who persuaded Copernicus to actually publish his findings, and then a cascade of celebratory coins and stamps and monuments. Calm, contained, logical—and very moving.