Triumph of the Wall

Eight years in the making, Triumph of the Wall is a largely comic documentary about two intertwined projects that appear to have no end. One is the construction of a stone wall covering 1,000 feet of an estate in rural Quebec; the other is this film itself, which painstakingly captures the many ups and downs of a novice stonemason's meticulous labors. Filmmaker Bill Stone begins his movie as a short-term shoot of artist Chris Overing's attempt to build that wall—made up of freestanding stones put together, without mortar, like a jigsaw puzzle—over a mere two months, beginning in 2001. But it soon becomes apparent that Overing has seriously underestimated how long it will take to build the wall, placing both him and Stone in a quandary about the extent of their commitment to something with no practical deadline or certain purpose. While Overing continues his hard work out of a sense of duty that ultimately becomes a larger journey, Stone seeks self-clarification, questioning why his film matters and whether he should be putting so much of his life into it. Stone's self-doubts are often comic, and scenes in which he's standing there, camera in hand, offering metaphysical queries to a guy trying to fit a heavy rock into a small space play like something out of a Woody Allen movie. A trip to Scotland to hang out with a master stonemason doesn't add much, although the arrival of a couple of Stone's friends—who become Overing's whining assistants—contrasts nicely with Overing's constant Zen equanimity. Recommended. (T. Keogh)