This is a nice little documentary about the lives and work of Charles and Ray Eames, the husband and wife team who captured the spirit of the post-war boom years with their elegant, efficient, modern and futuristic designs. (In case you didn't know, Ray was a lady.) It's an interesting story about how they fell in love due to their mutual respect for one another and their ability to work beautifully together. It shows their work not only designing the chairs and tables, but also their houses, paintings, films and other artistic projects. They had a studio where they worked with dozens of young designers over the years in a free-for-all of creative exploration.
The film also examines how Charles, the face of the company (because he was a man, of course), frequently took full credit for the work of his underlings and Ray. He comes off as a bit of a creative egomaniac who gave little explanation about his ultimate choices. Ray shrinks a bit into a corner of the screen here, partly because she was simply not in as many films of the time (because Charles was in all of them, by choice), but also because she gave into the dynamics of their relationship. This is a bit frustrating as it's really mostly a movie about Charles with a chapter on Ray, but told with a post-Second-Wave tone that suggests the couple were co-equal partners... which they might have been, but is hard to see with the materials presented on screen.
This is a fun movie and very informative. There are a handful of creative flourishes that directors Jason Cohn and Bill Jersey insert at times to tell the story in an Eamesian way, though nothing too revolutionary.
Stars: 2.5 of 4
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