Whatever your opinion of “The Gates,” the mammoth saffron-colored environmental art exhibit mounted by the artists Christo and his
wife Jean-Claude in Central Park in February 2005, there’s no doubt that the documentary about the project, also called “The Gates,” showing tonight on HBO, makes for fascinating viewing — at least for its first half hour.

Christo originally proposed the project in 1979. Fortunately for us, the legendary documentary filmmakers Albert and David Maysles were on hand to capture his increasingly fractious attempts to persuade city officials and skeptical New Yorkers in general that placing 7,503 orange gates in Central Park with flapping curtains attached was just what the doctor ordered for an ailing city.

Well, it was a different city then — a more argumentative one, at least. When the project was finally green-lighted by Michael Bloomberg 24 years later in 2003, the mayor justified his decision by arguing, “We have to reassert the daring and the imaginative spirit that really differentiates New York from any other city in the world.”

Somewhere within that utterance is a tacit admission that by 2003, this spirit may have gone missing. Behind it also lies the devastation of the World Trade Center — a colossally evil act of imaginative “daring” to which the film alludes with a puff of smoke. The terrorist attacks singled out New York as the world’s capital and then, in less than an hour, diminished its status both materially and psychologically in ways from which it may never fully recover.

“The Gates,” which also credits Antonio Ferrera and Matthew Prinzing among its four directors, clocks in at just over 90 minutes. Embedded in its opening half hour is the footage shot in 1979 as the Christos tried in vain to win over Gordon Brown, the city’s sleek, sphinx-like parks commissioner, while also pitching their “commodity” in a variety of forums, ranging from a community board in Harlem to a discussion at New York University.

Part of the magic of this opening 30 minutes is its weird, through-the-looking-glass evocation of the New York mythologized by Woody Allen in “Manhattan,” which was released the same year. In fact, with his black framed glasses, wreck of a hairstyle, and shapeless khaki jackets, Christo often comes across as a ganglier version of Mr. Allen with a Bulgarian accent. However, since he spends a fair amount of time arguing his case to black New Yorkers, he evades the charge frequently leveled at Mr. Allen: That his vision of the city is racially exclusive. Indeed, Christo found an eloquent backer in Kenneth Clark, an African-American social psychologist who, puffing thoughtfully on a cigarette, describes “The Gates” as a “unifying” artwork, largely because it is intended to cover the entirety of the park, thus including the black and Hispanic residents at its north end.

To which Christo’s own lawyer, Theodore W. Kheel, replies jokingly: “This is a racial issue now! If you’re against the project, you’re a racist!” But then, Mr. Kheel has already informed us that in the New York of 1979, if someone came up with a cure for cancer, someone else would immediately form a committee to protest the cure.

He takes great pleasure, even pride, in saying this. Back then, arguing was to a New Yorker what haggling is to a Moroccan rug merchant: an indispensable part of life. And though Mr. Clark backed the project from a minority viewpoint, a black onlooker at Harlem Community Board no. 10 scornfully dismisses it as mere artistic “ego-tripping.”

It’s at NYU, however, that the most inflammatory charges are hurled against Christo when an Eastern European woman sarcastically suggests that instead of putting up gates, they paint the park’s rocks pink and orange and hire bathing beauties to water-ski in the reservoir. “Think of the monotony of all those green trees and grass and lawns,” she says mockingly. An even more extreme response comes from a quintessentially grumpy old New Yorker: “I think what Christo is really dwelling on is death and burial. Really what he’s trying to do is bury us and bury the park!”

Christo is seen listening to all this, aghast, holding his head in his hands as if to ward off a migraine. Afterward, he labels the debate a “completely antihistorical, almost idiotical discussion.” Well, perhaps. But it certainly is lively to watch — and funny. By 2003 we have to content ourselves with Mr. Bloomberg’s lipless smile as he says yes to the project, end of story. The mayor describes himself as an art lover, but fails to mention tourism and the millions of dollars the city expected to reap as a result.

Although controversy still lingers after Mr. Bloomberg’s go-ahead, particularly on the topic of the $21 million the Christos claimed to have spent to realize their vision — a figure debunked as grossly exaggerated by some — the film slowly turns into a paean to “The Gates,” the park, the city, the snow, and the “unifying” effect which Christo and others correctly predicted his work would have on New Yorkers. (Whether it would have done the same in 1979, we can’t know, of course.)

A quarter of a century on, the Christos, who were born on the same day in 1935, retain an eternally youthful and optimistic air. They finish each other’s sentences and have a charming, Old World courtliness. (When his wife asks him if he liked a joke she made, Christo replies, “Very much, madame.”) At the same time, they are clearly in tune with the spirit of the age. The crowds who flock to the park ooh and ah about the endlessly flapping orange curtains, and, strolling among them, so do the artists.

If, as their most paranoid critic suggested in 1979, the Christos intended to “bury” New York, perhaps what they helped bury was a certain local spirit of dissent, which was mostly limited to talking heads, editorialists, comedians, and parodists. As former parks commissioner Henry J. Stern shrugs resignedly after Mr. Bloomberg gives his consent, “If the mayor wants to hang up underwear in Central Park, and it doesn’t cost the city anything, let him do it.” Now bring on the pink rocks and the bathing beauties.

bbernhard@earthlink.net