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BaftaBaby 
"Always entranced by cinema."
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 Posted - 12/09/2008 : 01:13:26
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Of Time And The City
This is probably Terence Davies' most personal film, not because it's autobiographical, which strictly speaking it isn't, nor because he's explicit about growing up in Liverpool from the mid-1940s to his 'escape' in the 1970s - which he isn't. Its effect is an expressionistic self-portrait composed of aleatory images, mostly black and white punctuated with color sequences that splash your eyes like cold water. Music happens when needed and often as a source of irony - e.g. the haunting yet cozy Oscar Hammerstein/Jerome Kern ballad The Folks Who Live on the Hill sung as we see the city's slum dwellings cleared to make room for towering blocks of flats -- but the soundtrack is mostly Davies' own mellifluous voice delivering brooding, sometimes startling thoughts, observations that veer from reportage to fractions of hilarity, and often quoting from a variety of cultural philosophers. Yes, there are moments, too, of pretentiousness, but this is a warts and all piece.
It's a short film, just over an hour, and structured like none you're likely ever to have seen. I'm not convinced it's the masterpiece some people are making out, but it's certainly an arresting peek into the way an artist processes the life around him. This is Davies making connections between what he sees and how the changes that re-shaped the city streets have helped to shape him. Particularly potent are the two overpowering architectural constants of the Liver buildings along the Mersey and the two iconic cathedrals dominating the skyline, providing the contrast to the way the decades have redesigned the recently awarded European City of Culture.
But just as the film isn't really a documentary about Davies, nor is it the portrait of a city. It's both and it's more and it's something else entirely. It has more in common with one of those art events - like Tracy Emin's Unmade Bed. The film's eclectic collection of images, barely arranged, has the ultimately satisfying effect of the way it felt to be Davies in a time and place that evolve. As though he's allowed us to rummage in a trunk of photos and old clothes, love letters and wank-mags, home movies and miraculously his mother's kiss tucked into her apron pocket for safe keeping.
I'm also not convinced that each and every image is entirely necessary, nor that they're in the most precise order they might be. The best filmic journeys are sign-posted by the perfect juxtaposition of shots. I'm not denying Davies has chosen and stitched together a quilt of fascinating images which trace the development of his home town, counterpointing it with his own journey to manhood. I suppose some of the shots were taken specifically for the film, but the majority are archive footage from newsreels and other people's documentaries. Some people deride Davies for that, but in the context it's perfectly valid.
In a strange way the film feels like a suicide note. No, it's not sad - though it is flavored with bittersweet nostalgia. More like the death of time passing.
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demonic 
"Cinemaniac"
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Posted - 12/09/2008 : 13:01:59
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I was disappointed following the glowing reviews. I think my main issue was with Davies narration which was fruity enough to open its own market stall. Pretentiousness was the feeling I couldn't shake.
Some of the imagery was superb, particularly of grimy post-war poverty striken Liverpool, and it was fascinating seeing the "Wigwam" being built, but he only really scratched the surface of the amount of interesting (and ugly) architecture in Liverpool. Given how much is fascinating, there was very little recognisable Liverpool - it could have been any Northern harbour town for the most part when you're looking at rows of terraced houses. For example the interior of the old Cathedral is too spectacular to ignore, particularly given the issues he has with religion. Too much Liver Buildings, not enough of the Albert Docks themselves.
The evocation of feeling toward the city was impressive, but I was never entirely sure what I looking at sometimes or being asked to conclude because of some of those seemingly random juxtapositions. Unlike you Baffy, it did bother me that most of the footage shot wasn't his own; it makes it far less a personal exploration; so then, what was the point? |
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BaftaBaby
"Always entranced by cinema."
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Posted - 12/09/2008 : 15:28:58
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quote:
Originally posted by dem9nic
I was disappointed following the glowing reviews. I think my main issue was with Davies narration which was fruity enough to open its own market stall. Pretentiousness was the feeling I couldn't shake.
Some of the imagery was superb, particularly of grimy post-war poverty striken Liverpool, and it was fascinating seeing the "Wigwam" being built, but he only really scratched the surface of the amount of interesting (and ugly) architecture in Liverpool. Given how much is fascinating, there was very little recognisable Liverpool - it could have been any Northern harbour town for the most part when you're looking at rows of terraced houses. For example the interior of the old Cathedral is too spectacular to ignore, particularly given the issues he has with religion. Too much Liver Buildings, not enough of the Albert Docks themselves.
The evocation of feeling toward the city was impressive, but I was never entirely sure what I looking at sometimes or being asked to conclude because of some of those seemingly random juxtapositions. Unlike you Baffy, it did bother me that most of the footage shot wasn't his own; it makes it far less a personal exploration; so then, what was the point?
Of course I'm not inside his head, but I think the point is that as I tried to say above, it's not a film about Liverpool, nor is it entirely a film about Davies. Rather it's the representation of a feeling, or a succession of feelings that live in a box called remember - the feelings evoked when one person recalls the images carried around in one's head. The cathedral, for example. Any image of it leads to a stream of consciousness flow not only about religion, or his religious rejections, but about a whole raft of changes he associates with that piece of the puzzle of his life.
I think part of the point is the way we meditate on life - our own life, but as it connects with the life around us and how it got to be that way.
I've said I don't think it's wholly successful. But it's a brave attempt to use film in a way we probably haven't seen since Warhol's early pieces.
And I think part of the point is the one Magritte was making with his brilliant painting of a pipe called Ceci n'est pas une pipe [This is not a pipe]. Davies is dealing with the passage of time within a certain context - Of Time and the City. He's dealing with it within a medium produced by the fleeting passage of one image frame preceded by and following another at 24 frames per second. In and of itself that is a manifestation of time, which is why I suspect some of the images could be excised completely or moved around and it wouldn't make that much difference.
This is and is not his Liverpool. The one in his memory, in his heart. Ceci n'est pas Liverpool. It's not fair, I think, to say well, why isn't this there? Or I could have done with more of ... whatever. This is Davies trying to let us feel what it is to be Davies.
Clearly no one can every truly do that. But surely that's the task all artists want to make. Whether actors, choreographers, songwriters or portrait painters - artists carry with them the inter-relationship between their lives and the world of otherness. It's where they meet in the middle that art occurs.
I'm guessing, of course ...  
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demonic
"Cinemaniac"
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Posted - 12/09/2008 : 22:19:39
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Interesting. But if Davies was trying to tell us what it is like to be himself through his investigation and memories of growing up in Liverpool I can only call that a failure, as he came across as a pompous, self-important dullard. Or if he is, perhaps that was a success?
All I can say is I was far more interested in this film because of Liverpool than Davies, and the Liverpool he showed us didn't seem especially representative of that city - in fact it was hardly representative of him as he hadn't shot most of the footage himself.
Your point about artists needing to express themselves is fair enough but I think a primary requirement of art in all its forms is to be able to connect and speak to an audience; to show them things they hadn't yet realised or had forgotten about themselves or the world. Davies decision to fragment and structure his film oddly, and to weigh his narration with weighty philosophical and poetical quotes rather than attempting to say something directly, reduced his film to some interesting imagery but that was about it for me. |
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Of Time And The City
