Curtain Road, originally uploaded by bluebirdiebird88.
London, directed by Patrick Keiller, is a portrait of London in 1992 painted in shades of brown. It’s a fictional narrative of literary and intellectual meanderings around London and its suburbs via romanticism and English Gothic fiction.
Illustrated with a series of locked off static shots, it’s a bleak and dismal place where IRA bombs , the re-election of the Conservative government and recession seem to have drained all colour from the city. It’s a city that seems to be auditioning for inclusion in latest edition of Crap Towns.
London appears as a landscape populated with brutalist buildings, vehicles, open fields and abandoned building sites. When we do see people, they appear paralysed, staring at the aftermath of some catastrophe or walking as if through treacle. Rarely do we hear sound other than the narration, as if we’re gazing at London through the walls of an aquarium.
The narrator observes that London is “a place full of interesting people who…would prefer to be elsewhere”. London and its inhabitants are rendered solitary and unsociable by its climate, geography and poor transport that drive its inhabitants to boredom and despair.
It’s a journey that unfolds month by month; in August the city emerges from the gloom becoming more recognisable to the casual visitor, as our route takes us to the Geffrye Museum, The City and Spitalfields.
Strangely hypnotic, it’s the kind of film that would be shown at Monkey Town.
Interesting to compare this with another film that documents a year in the life of a city in crisis. NY77: The Coolest Year in Hell, because the two are polar opposites. NY77 fizzes with energy, noise and good humour, whereas London is flat, silent and torpid. Travelling between the two cities, the same is noticeable. While New Yorkers live life, Londoners seem to be merely getting through it, weighed down by a debilitating low grade depression.
