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Besides his prolificness and seemingly inexhaustible commitment to his art (he turns 94 in a few weeks), what distinguishes Frederick Wiseman among most documentarians is his willingness to revel in mundanity — the moments other filmmakers might snip in their quest to contrive a satisfying narrative arc from everyday material. 

Traversing everywhere from the halls of a high school to a hospital to a public-housing development, Wiseman has become recognizable for rejecting the genre’s hallmark devices, like talking-head interviews or voiceover narration, in favor of what, from the viewer’s vantage, looks simply like fly-on-the-wall observation. Largely avoiding any sort of preparation before his boots hit the ground and often collecting hundreds of hours of footage in the months he spends studying his subject matter of the hour, Wiseman makes documentaries that tend to be as blunt and to the point as the titles given to them (examples include Zoo, Meat, and State Legislature). He champions the idea that in order to come close to understanding something, one ought to see it at both its most compelling and most tedious; his style suggests an objectivity that he himself knows is always, in documentary making, an impossibility. 

Wiseman’s latest movie, Menus-Plaisirs – Les Troisgros, finds the filmmaker training his gaze on one of his most conventionally glamorous subjects: the people behind, and the processes keeping humming, Le Bois Sans Feuilles, an acclaimed Michelin 3-starred restaurant a French family has operated for four generations, and the latter’s other restaurants. 

From Menus-Plaisirs – Les Troisgros. All photography courtesy of Zipporah Films.

Wiseman, predictably, turns over most stones. This is a movie as fascinated by the delicate preparation of the food — not to mention the methodical sourcing of its ingredients — as in the humdrum tasks that are just as crucial to making a diner’s night out at Le Bois Sans Feuilles a success, like the process deciding which fish to offer on an updated menu or raking through the various food insensitivities guests have the kitchen staff should be wary of. That there is never any real conflict captured is only a testament to how well-oiled a machine Le Bois Sans Feuilles is, achieving such harmony between preparation and presentation that the hard work certainly there appears seamless to the viewer. 

Naturally for a director who makes it a point not to “get in the way” — to not conspicuously nudge his subjects to offer him something he’s looking for — Menus-Plaisirs – Les Troisgros is a movie more painstakingly about how the sausage is made as opposed to the characterological minutiae of the people who make the restaurant great. (When we do get background details, they usually emerge when current patriarch Michel Troisgros is conversing with diners, a personable touch he sees as pivotal; among the most generous offerings of anything like a family history comes close to the end of the movie.) 

Menus-Plaisirs – Les Troisgros sprawls four hours — an intimidating length I cop to having had to split up into a few separate viewings. But as Wiseman’s often toweringly lengthed movies show, there’s power in accrual, helping us better see how the people who make Troisgros what it is could dedicate their life to a demanding, world-renowned enterprise, the possibilities posed by different approaches to food endlessly exciting and the secondary joy of being responsible for a major moment in a diner’s life invigorating. There may be some hunger, after finishing Menus-Plaisirs – Les Troisgros, to see a more orthodox film about the family serving as its foundation, probing harder at histories and personalities and seeing what might surface. That shouldn’t suggest a shortcoming so much as underscore what Wiseman is so good at: fostering the sort of immersion that makes you feel like you’re in the room, experiencing frustrations and pleasures as they happen. He doesn’t have to spoon-feed to keep you satisfied in a different way.