One Word Movie

Distant Voices, Still Lives

The aesthetic experiment comes to fruition. This film doesn't start off too bad, very intense camera-work, a shot of a hall in a terraced house held for ages, before slowly zooming or dollying inwards to the sound of disembodied voices. And that's the high point. This shot and the idea behind it are repeated many times throughout the film, which is emblematic of its failings. There is no deepening of the drama, no understanding, no modulation of the emotional tone. Pete Postlethwaite smacks his missus; it is shocking. He does it again; it's tiresome, in the same way as a conversation with someone who really wants to talk about bus routes. He lies in a hospital bed. You wish he would die, in a slightly bored fashion, so as to be able to get out of the cinema earlier.

It's a funny word to use of an overly serious film about domestic violence, but I found it sentimental, in its unwillingness to engage with the characters as real people. And fortunately I had seen this film before, so I was able to do something I hadn't managed to do 20 years before, and walk out.

The sky had cleared and it was a beautiful evening by the river; this lot were busking by the moebius prism outside the NFT, and there was more enjoyment in five seconds of their music than in an hour of Terence Davies' best. A shit film that couldn't spoil a nice day.

posted by Chairman Peyote @ 2:13 PM