Columbus: The Oppressive Weight of Modernism
Too many filmmakers treat architecture as mere geography—a pretty background to stand in front of while reciting dialogue. Kogonada, in his debut feature Columbus, understands that a building is a structural mandate. Modernist architecture does not simply house human beings; it dictates their movements and dwarfs their emotions. The Geometry of Isolation Kogonada and cinematographer Elisha Christian approached the modernist mecca of Columbus, Indiana, not with a handheld camera looking for gritty realism, but with a tripod and an obsession with geometry. During pre-production, they took exhaustive photographs of every location, mapping the specific lines, negative spaces, and symmetries of the buildings. ...