Gates, the

Christo and Jeanne-Claude, the French couple who constructed public art for public places, always pulled down their creations after a couple of weeks. However, they immortalised them, and themselves, by producing their own documentaries. Like the artists' works, these were also highly professional exercises, using leading documentary director Albert Maysles, and/or his brother David, six times; most recently, in 2007, for The Gates.

Bulgarian-born Christo and his Morocco-born French wife were stage managers of elaborate and gigantic public art displays designed to amuse the masses and give the naturalised American pair an interesting living and lives.

In New York, they'd starting planning the Gates project in 1979, and the full title for its eventual installation in 2005 included "Central Park, New York, 1979-2005". Its commemorative documentary enabled Maysles to incorporate old film of their initial efforts to convince New York decision-makers to accept their "gift" of a US$4-5 million temporary erection of thousands of tall poles sporting saffron-coloured cloth.

The opponents' reasons for denouncing and rejecting the proposal were often reasonable, but two key factors changed fate for the artists (whose home base was New York). Michael Bloomberg had been elected mayor in 2003, and he always did what he wanted with little debate. More important, for his and the project's PR purposes, 9-11 had happened. Anything that would brighten up New Yorkers' lives in wintry February 2005 was now welcomed.

The resultant movie notes the negative reactions, and lets the artists and their supporters promote their proposal. Its supposed cost of US$20-21 million has been queried by the New York Times and other researchers, but it may be true that it cost the city nothing in terms of cash to allow astronomical amounts of iron, mechanical devices and orange material to be flaunted on 7,500 archways along 37 kilometres of paths of differing widths heading north and south through Central Park.

The documentary constantly advises that the artists always financed their works through pre-sales of Christo's paintings, sketches, prints and other memorabilia. His wife (who died in 2009) was his sharp-witted manager, her hair dyed red in contrast to his silvery locks. Their shared birthday was the most romantic detail of their extraordinary partnership (swathing landmarks from Sydney's Little Bay to Berlin's Reichstag, Paris's Pont Neuf and islands in Biscayne Bay).

The Gates is not an objective, fact-seeking, mood-exploring documentary. It is, simply, too simply, a promotional film, a vanity project, an historical document.