Paper & Glue (JR, 2021)

Paper & Glue is an immensely hopeful film, arriving at a time when I have been feeling particularly hopeless about the state of the world we live in.

Political problems, social problems, environmental problems all look and feel so deeply intertwined that we may despair — or at least wonder what ordinary people can do.

It turns out that one of the most important things an ordinary person can do is show up. JR shows up at the Mexican-American border, at a high-security prison, at a poverty-stricken Brazilian neighborhood. He takes pictures. At times he gives cameras to children to take pictures for him. He blows up the photos to landscape size, gluing them to bridges and buildings and the floor of a prison.

The results are stunning. A giant banner spans either side of a border wall, and the ensuing picnic to celebrate the artwork temporarily unites those on either side of the divisive structure. A collage of faces challenges those looking down from above to see the occupants of prison not as an indistinct group but rather as a collection of human beings. Murals of mothers and brothers and sisters and suns make drug dealers put away their guns temporarily and inmates work side by side in the creation of a fleeting moment of beauty.

You may know JR as Agnès Varda’s collaborator from Faces Places. If you assumed, as I did, that Varda was the primary reason for that film’s success, Paper & Glue may be an eye-opener about more things than the artist’s subjects. JR comes across as indefatigable without being manic. The documentary has a few confessional-type addresses to the camera, but these only serve to reinforce the notion that the artist is sincere and transparent when trying to explain his artistic intentions to those who may not know what to expect from him.

Often, JR does not know what to expect himself. He is a portrait of intellectual and artistic curiosity, often confiding to those he finds at the sites he chooses that he neither knows what to expect from or hope for the art he brings to their community. What it often brings is a feeling of having been seen.

There are several clips throughout Paper & Glue of JR’s art being destroyed. The walls of a building the photos are pasted upon get demolished. A brick facade is power washed. As strips of paper are removed, we are invited to contemplate the fleeting nature of not only the image but of the bodies that the images capture. By choosing less permanent media for his portraits, JR manages to convey the beauty of fragility and the necessity of living in the present moment rather than investing ourselves too much in a distant past or an uncertain future.

Paper & Glue is opening in New York and Los Angeles in mid-November, followed by theatrical runs in major cities to follow. It is worth tracking for when it comes to your area. A powerful reminder of art’s power to transcend our immediate circumstances, it is one of the most uplifting and hopeful films of the year.