So, I get that movie producers often use real places to set the scene for their film. However, when the movie is about kids living in "a war ravaged neighborhood," it's weird when you recognize the place.
Apparently, Riverside Plaza -- a cluster of high-rise apartment buildings near downtown Minneapolis -- is the setting for "Ana's Playground", a film made by students at Augsburg College, which is right next to the apartments. The brutalist buildings themselves are distinct -- although some of the structures are bland concrete, most of them are clad in colorful paneling that screams "this happened in the 1970s!"
The apartments were built as mixed-income buildings, but the reality never matched the dream. If I remember correctly from a presentation I've heard on the complex, Ralph Rapson (head of the U of M architecture school from 1954-84 and designer of the old Guthrie, RIP) hoped it would be a catalyst for social change in the area, where white-collar workers could live alongside new immigrants, and frolic among the fountains and eat in restaurants below. However, even though they were supposedly where Minneapolis' fictional Mary Tyler Moore lived, they never really attracted the white-collar workers, and they quickly became not a city solution, but part of the problem. In the end, only about a fifth of Rapson's entire plan was built. The fountains don't work. Locally, some people call them the Crack Stacks, because they're known for some unsavory behavior.
However, they're also home to a lot of Augsburg students and a large Somali community. And, while they are pretty gaudy on the MPLS skyline, they speak to the era in which they were built. However, to put them in another context — a post-war context — caused me to look at them with a whole new lens. Scrolling through the film stills, I recognize what I remember from visiting Lviv, Ukraine, where the communist-built structures encroached on the Austro-Hungarian center-city. It felt foreboding, depressing. Ugh. Really — there was this feeling of utter despair, and that's the feeling the filmmakers give to Riverside.
I guess they accomplished what they wanted, but it sure doesn't help the neighborhood's image in my mind.
That area is probably one of the biggest eyesores in Minneapolis. I had a friend who lived in one of those buildings and I've heard what goes on in there. It ain't pretty.
ReplyDelete'catalyst for social change' eh? More like hubris. Epic fail.
I find it ironic that it's the backdrop for a 'war ravaged neighborhood'. A few years back some guy was rampaging through the area with a machete and the police had to shoot him. I guess social disorder was their idea of 'change'.