Yield to Total Elation: The Life & Art of Achilles Rizzoli

San Francisco's visionary draftsman Achilles Rizzoli created fanciful, often bizarre, Beaux Art-influenced drawings of architectural monuments that were never shown, much less built. A child of Swiss immigrants, Rizzoli was a recluse who lived with his mother until her passing, never married, had no social life, and was haunted by visions and voices in the later stages of his life. Yield to Total Elation dwells lovingly on a number of Rizzoli's elaborate renderings, in the belief that something wonderful and profound is going on in his work. While he was a very fine draftsman, incredibly meticulous, and possessed an Olympian imagination, Rizzoli also clearly had little sympathy for the human figure (his drawings of people are cartoonish). The film interviews a few commentators who find Rizzoli's work challenging, putting a very high price on eccentricity, while offering no compelling reason to view his work as anything but the output of a skilled draftsman hard pressed to maintain his grip on sanity. Stylistically, the film is a bit artsy and precious (with tenor John Duykers' rendition of a few passages of narrative in a faux-operatic style, particularly ridiculous). Larger arts collections will want to consider; for others, this is an optional purchase. Aud: H, C, P. (P. Van Vleck)