Helvetica is Big Brother (Documentary Review)

          Helvetica is Big Brother, it is Times Square, it is epidemics and the reason children are afraid of the bark on trees and the cheese on processed hamburgers. Helvetica is everywhere. So realized director Gary Huswit in his film of the type's name. Huswit made the film almost as meta as the type has come to preside in the world, as it begins with a typographer printing the word traditionally onto rough paper. His name appears in the type in the corner, and then the film is Times Square. "It's like gravity.. like air.." one designer comments in the credits. The obsession with the curve in the lowercase h's and the straights in the C's sounds ridiculous, but as Huswit's team bombards the viewer with Helvetica's almost frightening ascendancy, one understands its absolute precedence.
         Helvetica is the official type of Target, Macy's, Bloomingdale's, Nesle, Saab, Toyota, McDonalds, Paanasonic, Staples, Apple, Sesame Street, Run DMC, shirts that say &&&, the New York City Transit system, and life. Helvetica is more than cheeky American Apparel and sleek American Airlines. It is the stencil of Steve Job's black and white simplicity of Apple. It is the means of Arial's existence. Helvetica is the type for life, so starts the movie. The film begins in what is likely the origin of a art, New York City. The designer of initial Helvetica conversation is Massimo Vingnelli, creator of the New York City transit design. Vingnelli is simple; he reminds one much of Apple Computers. As such, the first A-Roll of the film, after B-Roll of perhaps every advertisement at Times Square, written neatly in Helvetica Bold, extra thin, lower case, italics, is homage to Steve Job's turtle neck and Helvetica in the corner. This technique invokes the revelation in the viewer of its total control.
         Vingelli introduces the myth that Helvetica is a perfect type, and it is in no way to be improved. Vingelli comments "In a sense, it's like music It's the spaces between the notes that makes the music." As Vingelli speaks, little diagetic sound is heard. The film transgresses into one about opinions of designers, and really all the sound heard is of the voices explaining the story of a the ultimate typeface. Another old man, as in the film age has very much to do with Helvetica sentiments, Wim Crouel, reflects "“Helvetica was a real step from the nineteenth century typeface. It was a little more machine... It was more neutral... it shouldn’t have a meaning in itself. The meaning was in the content of the text, and not in the type face. And that’s why we love Helvetica very much.” The film cuts to painful B-Roll of more Helvetica-is-Everywhere type shots.
Munichen, Switzerland, is Helvetica's birthplace, it's father Eduard Hoffman. Hoffman desired a font which was modernized, but easy to read and accessible. Father of Haas types as well, which a German typeface company named Semple owned. Those involved in its production are painted as in love with their type child. Reflecting upon Helvetica's influence, Mike Parker, a director of typographic development explains "“What it’s all about is the shapes between characters and within characters...these spaces hold the letters...they live in a powerful matrix of surrounding space." The specificity of Helvetica provides for its longevity and subtle influence. Helvetica is on the keyboard on which I type, and the computer on which my words appear. The viewer realizes this as the film cuts to more B-Roll of Helvetica, and focusses primarily on the words of each designer.
Just as the viewer falls in love with the mathematics and simplicity of Helvetica, the film infringes upon one's ideas of order and organization with those of the anti-Helvetica movements. These designers are almost bitter in their portrayal, yet the camera is the same. The lighting is still bright, and natural, as most designers discuss in front of windows or under soft lamp light. The designers; however, are portrayed almost as sloppily as their work appears to the old men who pray to Helvetica. Paula Shere is a designer against Helvetica, after she realized typeography was its own art form, and it was largely ignored because Helvetica was the almighty answer. Shere recolects "It reminded me of cleaning my room.. I felt it was some conspiracy of my mother's to keep my room clean." Other designers, such as the havoc reeking David Carson, was thought to have ruined Helvetica's perfection, but remains it's "simple, clean, and boring." The almost sudden portrayal of the designers who oppose Helvetica produces less sympathy for their work, and inadvertently propels a bias in the piece.
There's more B-Roll of Helvetica and how you are Winston, and the crew travels to London. The crew travels to Germany and back to New York. There's A-Roll of bitter artists trying to escape the romance with which Helvetica attracts them. There's A-Roll of old men in love with its modernity and it's industriousness and it's perfection which can't ever be changed because the space in between the lower case a is too nice. The movie grows redundant after a while, and the argument only appeals to those truly interested in typography. It seems as if the revelation of Helvetica's influence over life comes to be accepted within the first 40 minutes of the film, and the rest leaves the viewer with a sickening sense of helplessness, as if the type is a relative one's known all one's life as a friend, but who turns out to be a brother.
I read an article on Rookie Magazine about the woman who designed the typeface for Moonrise Kingdom. It seemed as if typeface was an art of preservation, yet one of motivation and meaning and total creativity. Helvetica ruined much of that for me. Its motives were well intended, as it wanted to inform the viewer of the world and a type inevitable to life; yet all of the mathematical and obsessive nature of the type made it feel secular and distant. I enjoyed realizing how much of the world is Helvetica. NASA's spaceship to the moon had a print of Helvetica on the side. I enjoyed the intrigue of its history; however, I do wish it were more artistic and explanatory of a sense, because typeface is art.
The film becomes Helvetica, because one realizes it is within every line of sight, as long as there are letters, and that was its intent. I wrote this in Helvetica. Helvetica did an excellent job at executing its goal, however it didn't make the viewer care, and in that it was as good as Arial.

Helvetica
80 minutes

7/10 stars