Walking the balance beam between exhaustive and exhausting, Frederick Wiseman’s four-hour documentary “At Berkeley” casts a nonjudgmental eye on everyone from cement layers to students discussing Thoreau to administrators complaining about budgeting. If only everything were interesting.
Wiseman, the 80-year-old veteran maker of such breakthrough docs as the insane-asylum exposé “Titicut Follies,” likes to park his camera for long periods and edit shots together without narration, titles to identify speakers or much apparent thematic continuity. There is an early insight on Berkeley’s views on the individual versus the collective: A classroom where everyone agrees the public should be paying their way for the greater good gives way to an administration meeting in which we learn that Berkeleyites are reactionaries steadfastly opposed to any change, even if such adjustments seem good for the community.
But usually the film rambles so far and wide that, though often compelling on the micro level, individual segments don’t build on each other enough to create a narrative. When a filmmaker lacks focus, the audience is sure to lose its.