Central Park

Over the course of one day in New York’s Central Park, Frederick Wiseman takes us from a wedding ceremony to a ‘dinosaur meeting’, from a poetry masterclass to a solitary practitioner of Tai Chi. Frederic Wiseman takes us along to the Gay Parade, invites us to a bombastic speech by former mayor Ed Koch, and to concerts by Midnight Oil and Pavarotti.

We encounter lonely joggers, fanatical gardeners, and desperate peace fighters. We take part in heated discussions about an old tennis house, we drink a cocktail with some flashy housewives that seem to claim the supervision of Central Park. Wiseman shows these sequences with a generous dose of irony.

Yet one subject seems to have been shot with more emotion than all the others: the Quilt, the enormous memorial displayed in Central Park bearing the names of countless victims of AIDS. The innocent curiosity of children admiring its beautiful panels stands in poignant contrast to the profound grief expressed by a mother mourning her son. Central Park forces us to look in the mirror, to laugh at ourselves, and ultimately to recognize the relativity of our place within the larger world.