Helvetica

Gary Hustwit, UK, 2007
2 out of 4 stars

On certain occasions, I can be somewhat susceptible to persuasion when someone makes an off-the-wall film recommendation, particularly in the classroom for some reason, and this is a perfect example of it; a feature documentary on a font, for gosh sakes, that a guest lecturer in my “history of the book” seminar enthusiastically recommended.

I actually respect it as a valiant effort, but of course it turns out to be largely boring to someone who doesn’t already care about fonts or design. Helvetica consists of two kinds of scenes; talking-head interviews with designers and typographers, and series of brief shots of Helevtica use, mostly in various street signs. I’m slightly more interested in fonts than most people, and I was surprised to realize, for instance, how many major logos are all in this same font, which honestly in its large street-style is almost unrecognizable from its computer version. I found the London sequence to have some particularly interesting visual touches, but overall these sequences are quite repetitive.

As for the interviews, I felt that relatively few of the people with whom the director spoke with were either interesting or insightful (much less both). The young designers come off as pompous art-school twits with almost nothing to say, while the experts who tried to explain its historical origins nearly bored me into a stupor. A few people make some interesting points about Helvetica’s cultural and economic significance, and at times I almost felt like the film was worth it. Overall, it’s not; this could have been an interesting article but for the unconverted it cannot be an interesting film.

Source: Red Envelope DVD
19 May, 9:05 PM