Like a lot of people of acquired wealth, Adrien Brody realizes that there are some truly beautiful upstate New York properties (partially because PREVIOUS generations of acquired wealth built things there) and he decides he's going to buy one of them.
He then does not hire either a general contractor or a professional design firm.
The rest of the movie are the consequences of that, told slowly and deliberately but never bringing it up. As Brody goes through all the perfectly normal life changes of someone with a transient set of projects (he's an actor, after all, and that requires time and travel and distance over the years), his lack of a dedicated set of project managers who are focused on the overarching outline of the renovation comes back to haunt him again and again.
The movie is a lovely portrait of a talented man the director clearly admires. The actual supposed Main Theme of the documentary, the castle renovation, is at best a sideshow. Imagine a documentary about Adrien Brody restoring a car, except he randomly drives it to different mechanics and metal people at various times and is confused when the work is delayed, slipshod, surprising and occasionally really good. That's this movie.
But next time: if you take on a big construction project and you, yourself, justifably have to travel and work on projects that take you away from the job site for weeks and months, hire a general contractor/firm. You wouldn't go to court without a lawyer, and you wouldn't renovate a castle without proper staff. Unless, it appears, you are Adrien Brody.
