“What makes [the project] exceptional is the reduction of authorship to a team,” says the architect Mark Burry in Sagrada: The Mystery of Creation, a new film by Stefan Haupt documenting the history, present, and future of perhaps the world’s most famous construction site: the Sagrada Família in Barcelona. Premiering Friday at the Laemmle's Playhouse 7 in Pasadena, the film is a thoughtful, slow-paced consideration of the Antoni Gaudí-designed basilica that has taken over a century to build. In an era in which the architect and their oeuvre often seem to overshadow the singular work itself, the film stands out as a study of various individuals who have, in many cases, devoted their entire lives to a project that they may never see completed.

Paralleling the deferral of authorship by Gaudí, those currently involved in the project appear uniquely devoted to the larger project, even at the expense of their own exposure. Almost like a stage play, the film introduces a series of characters: the sculptor, who waits for permission from a rock before he carves it; two brothers – the chief architect and the head priest – who have dedicated their lives to the building; the artist who paints watercolors and the dutiful craftsman who painstakingly realizes them in stained glass; the agnostic sculptor who controversially moved away from Gaudí in order to find the inspiration necessary to depict the crucifixion. Moreover, in the film’s passing shots of the operator of a industrial floor sweeper and other unnamed construction workers, there is a suggestion that the film itself cannot contain the myriad hands and voices that together constitute the construction of what will one day be among the largest churches in the world.

This is not to say the film is entirely without flaw. In attempting to represent the wondrousness of the Sagrada Família, the filmmakers included some ponderous, perhaps cliché elements, in particular an androgynous figure, who may or may not represent a young Gaudí, wandering through the construction site for no apparent reason. While some of the interviews provide stunning moments – like when a theologian stutteringly exclaims, “Mystery – mystery has no content!” – others verge on the pedantic. Still, the combined efforts of so many incredibly talented people to create a work that is larger than any of its individual components appears mesmerizing, substantiating the “mystery of creation” invoked in film’s title. In a time in which collaborative activity falls into the shadows cast by singular individuals, in which accelerating technologies and styles seem to date a building before construction has begun, Sagrada Familia provides a breath of fresh air, a much-needed reminder that the temporality of architecture can be different, and so can the way that architects relate to their own work. 

Sagrada: The Mystery of Creation opens April 3 at Laemmle's Playhouse 7 in Pasadena.