"It's like having Picasso paint ‘Guernica' on the surface of ‘The Last Supper,'" one woman analogizes in devil's advocacy against a pitch by artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude to temporarily garnish Manhattan's Central Park with more than 7,500 arches draped in carrot-colored nylon. Though a bit lofty, the comparison is not entirely wrong - 150 years ago Olmsted and Vaux molded Central Park as painstakingly as any sculptor - and it wouldn't be the only resistance to the project, which spanned a quarter-century from proposal to installation. That means it takes merely 25 years to alchemize red tape into orange fabric.

The wispy, enjoyable documentary "The Gates," directed by Antonio Ferrera, Albert Maysles, the late David Maysles, and Matthew Prinzing, follows Christo and the slyly funny Jeanne-Claude as they try to cajole assorted bureaucrats and boards into letting them practice their particular brand of landscape adornment in New York City's backyard. Ace cinematographer Albert Maysles ("Grey Gardens" is among his filmmaking achievements) had worked with the husband-and-wife team five times before to document previous installations, and the "The Gates" begins in 1979 with an expeditionary visit to a lawyer, who appears hilariously bored with the project proposed by the unremarkable immigrants (Christo is Bulgarian, while Jeanne-Claude is French)...until they mention the $5 million they're willing to spend.

Over the next couple decades the administrations change, Christo's hair greys while Jeanne-Claude's turns Raggedy Ann red, and the arguments - from aesthetics to exclusivity - remain, though the underlying opposition seems to take the form of suspicion. Why are Christo and Jeanne-Claude willing to spend so much of their own money (the price tag would eventually quadruple) on what they're calling "The Gates"? Beauty is the simple answer, and it's Mayor Bloomberg who finally sees "The Gates" as a gift to Manhattan, still reeling from 9/11/01. The film then concerns itself with the construction of "The Gates" and the mixed reactions of parkgoers, some excited but some uncertain in light of the potential desecration of the Big Apple's core.

We know, of course, that "The Gates" was a resounding success, luring a throng of visitors to Central Park for 16 days in February 2005. The lovely camerawork by Antonio Ferrera and Albert Maysles during the denouement of "The Gates" showcases the ultimate vision of Christo and Jeanne-Claude, neither snow nor rain preventing dazzled attendees (including those initially skeptical) from taking total pleasure in something that had no real purpose other than splendor. "You look at it and you just keep on walking," one street vendor admires, though he does confess he preferred their 1991 California/Japan endeavor, "The Umbrellas." Everyone, as they say, is a critic.

A seemingly Spanish woman wanders over to the camera: "Excuse me. De tomba Jeem Morrizone, please?" The dead Doors frontman is just one of the legends spending eternity at Paris' Père-Lachaise Cemetery - Molière, Oscar Wilde, Alice B. Toklas, and Richard Wright, to name a few, are interred there as well - and with "Forever," documentarian Heddy Honigmann has crafted a touching look at both death and life against the backdrop of most famous final resting place in the world.

While Honigmann's style is to approach people reflecting at gravesites, she does so respectfully, and it's in this way we learn about the dead as well as those they've inspired. A Japanese pianist funnels her appreciation for Frédéric Chopin into the recent loss of her beloved father, and an embalmer sits at painter Amadeo Modigliani's grave and compares their respective professions. Most affecting is a transplanted Iranian taxi driver, waxing over entombed Persian writer Sadegh Hedayat, his homesickness palpable in the traditional song Honigmann convinces him to sing after a long, fascinating take.

But "Forever" reminds us that it's not just the prominent buried at stunning Père-Lachaise. Honigmann spends time with ordinary people left behind, tidying up graves and reading to their dearly departed, all in states of grief from calmly resigned to heart-tuggingly raw. But one woman of Armenian descent visiting her late father sums up the comfort of Père-Lachaise - and probably every cemetery - thusly: "I hope he can hear me. But if he can't, then I at least feel relieved."