Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		1.0
Overall		3.5

Mur Murs Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman July 31, 2020

Note: This film is available as part of The Complete Films of Agnès Varda.

In the wake (figurative or otherwise) of Agnès Varda’s death last year at the age of 90, quite a bit has rightfully been written about this iconic force in both French and global cinema. Varda’s output includes well over fifty credits as a director (including some television entries as detailed by the IMDb), and aside from listing some of her better known triumphs, many obituaries and/or eulogies about Varda mentioned any number of other biographical data points, including her rather unique position as a woman in France’s nouvelle vague movement, her own feminism which was featured none too subtly in some of her films, and her frequently provocative experimental style. But you know what one of the things that kind of fascinates me personally most about Varda? That she was married for 28 years to Jacques Demy, from 1962 until Demy’s death in 1990. That Varda, often a purveyor of verité infused “realism”, whether that be in outright documentaries or at least ostensibly more “fictional” outings, and Demy, a director whose candy colored, dreamlike and at least relatively "Hollywoodized" musicals with Michel Legrand brought a new luster and gloss to French cinema, managed to make a marital go of it for so long is certainly testament to the maxim that “opposites attract”, even if those oppositional forces in this instance played out at least in part in terms of what kinds of films the two were often best remembered for. If Varda's long marriage to Demy is more than enough reason to celebrate her personal life, her professional life is beautifully feted in this rather astounding new set from Criterion, which aggregates an amazing 39 films (albeit some running as short as a few minutes) to provide what is arguably one of the most insightful overviews of Varda's cinematic oeuvre. Perhaps unavoidably, but also undeniably movingly, these personal and professional sides of Varda merge in at least some of the films in this set, including The Young Girls Turn 25, The World of Jacques Demy, Jacquot de Nantes, and The Beaches of Agnès.

While made more than a decade after Uncle Yanco, Black Panthers and Lions Love (...and Lies), Mur Murs finds Agnès Varda back in California, in Los Angeles, to be exact, where she points her typically quietly subversive "documentary" camera at wall art and other graffiti in and around the teeming metropolis. This is on one level a pretty straightforward piece by Varda, especially within the context of a "Varda documentary", but it definitely has a point of view as Varda explores elements like gentrification, urban decay and the seemingly undeniable propensity of humans to create art (and/or Art) in even the direst of circumstances.

As I've mentioned in several reviews of the other features and shorts in this collection, Varda seemed preternaturally prone toward investigating what might for want of a better term be called "community", whether or not that grouping actually was geographically or genetically united. Varda moves through a huge swath of the greater Los Angeles area as she finds wall art and the artists who made it, but she seems to be evoking that "community" spirit as she goes, finding common threads in various vignettes and touching upon what is an obvious if sometimes unstated ambition for art (and/or Art): communication and connection.

Mur Murs Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Mur Murs is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of The Criterion Collection with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.37:1. Some prefatory text discloses that this was restored in 2013 by L'Immagine Ritrovata Laboratory, in association with The Film Foundation, the Annenberg Foundation, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and Ciné Tamaris, with a 2K restoration from the 16mm original color negative. Agnès Varda supervised the color grading. This is another 16mm outing that can be somewhat roughhewn at times due to a pretty heavy grainfield, and short moments like the optically printed credits sequence can look fairly rough, with pretty fuzzy detail levels. That said, even in the roughest looking moments, the palette pops extremely well here, with blues and greens being especially vivid. The grain field tends to look quite gritty in a lot of the outdoor material where bright skies are in the frame. Densities are secure throughout the presentation, and fine detail on some of the "structures" like brick or stucco walls that have had murals or graffiti painted on them is typically very good. restored in 2013 by L'Immagine Tirtovata Laboratory, in association with The Film Foundation, the Annenberg Foundation, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and Cine Tamaris restored in 2K from 16mm original color negative, Varda supervised color grading orig mono sound restored from the 16mm magnetic track English version optically printed credits look a little rough beautiful gorgeous colors on the wall, greens and blues especially vivid grain can be pretty gritty looking, especially against brighter skies good densities, fine detail on things like bricks or stucco siding is very good or bark of palm trees

Mur Murs Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Mur Murs features an original bilingual track delivered in LPCM Mono, and an English language track in Dolby Digital Mono. For some reason, the prefatory text states only that the original mono sound was restored from the 16mm magnetic track English version. The bilingual track has better depth and sounds slightly hotter, but both tracks deliver almost all of the narration and dialogue clearly. The one exception is some almost whispered comments in English that are used as interstitial "devices" between some of the narration, which can occasionally be somewhat hard to decipher. Even the supposed "English" track has some French in it. The optional English subtitles only translate the French in both tracks. There's a late outdoor performance of live music that sounds a bit distorted, but my sense is that stems from the amp being used, and is not a fault of the track itself.

Mur Murs Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Introduction from 2014 (1080i; 00:31) offers Varda's thoughts. In French with English subtitles.


• Two Street Artists (1080i; 5:23) profiles its titular characters in footage shot between 2006 and 2012 in Paris. In French with English subtitles.


• Trailer (1080i; 2:33)

Mur Murs Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

This is another fascinating Varda documentary that seems to be about one thing on a surface level (literally, in this case, given the "surfaces" the wall art adorns), but which gets into a whole host of sidebar issues. Technical merits are generally solid, and Mur Murs comes Recommended.