An artist's blurry portrait

Julius Shulman, the irrepressible and engaging subject of the documentary "Visual Acoustics," was no ordinary architectural photographer, and his long and productive career makes for a fascinating primer in modern architecture, Los Angeles history and the meaning of a well-lived life.

Shulman, who died last summer at age 98, was a talented knockabout with an interest in photography when he met architect Richard Neutra in 1936. Thus began what should have been a minor career in architecture photography. But Shulman's eye made his photographs more than just documents of the built world. They became glamorous advertisements for a lifestyle in which human beings weren't so much at home as on stage.

"Visual Acoustics," narrated by Dustin Hoffman, includes interviews with architects and historians as well as artists such as Ed Ruscha, designers such as Tom Ford, and a fascinating encounter between Shulman and Frank Gehry. We see Shulman photographing the torquing, shifting, flowing metal sculpture that is Gehry's Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. But it would be good to know more about what Shulman actually thought of Gehry's work.

There are other unanswered questions in this film, directed by Eric Bricker. The most important one goes to the core of the film's message: What exactly was the lifestyle, the dream, the fantasy that Shulman was capturing? When you look at his photographs (which are flashed on screen too quickly to make much of an impression), it's hard not to think it was an elitist ideal, celebrating a life few could afford, far removed from the mass of humanity who lived in a tackier, boxier, more repetitious and monotonous world. Which is to say, it was a fantasy of modernism at odds with the social and political ideals of modernism. A contradiction, but not one you'll find articulated in this movie.

*** Unrated. At Landmark's E Street Cinema. Contains nothing objectionable for any audience. 83 minutes.