Sundance ’20: Aggie
**/****
directed by Catherine Gund
by Walter Chaw Agnes Gund is a fantastic person, a philanthropist art collector who sits as President Emirita for the Museum of Modern Art. She champions artists while they’re living, visits them in their studios to better understand the hands that move the creations, and recently sold a famous Roy Lichtenstein original (“Masterpiece”) for an ungodly sum of $162 million, which she used to create a foundation called “Art for Justice” dedicated to penal reform, with the ultimate aim of eradicating mass incarceration. She’s been called the “last good rich person” by the NEW YORK TIMES and it’s hard to argue, though the bar is admittedly low. The temptation is to launch into a long screed on the moral abomination of allowing such a thing as a billionaire to exist in the first place, just one of the many digressions that daughter Catherine’s able, functional documentary Aggie inspires. There are moments in this film where Gund, now in her eighties, needs to be cajoled into speaking (they’re played off as more of her humility), intercut with archival footage of a younger Gund demonstrating a more able public persona. She’s slowed down considerably, and I wondered a time or two if she has someone to manage her estate. I worry about her, but the film does not.
