So it Goes...

I had originally planned to spend the afternoon with a friend but with his final get-out calling to him I found other ways to entertain myself instead. Carting around my suitcase and two bags I power-walked from the infirmary to the Underbelly to catch the well-reviewed show, 'So It Goes'.

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Family seemed to be a running theme with all of the shows I managed to see this year but in this one in particular, we were thrust into a world of family relationships that seemed all too familiar. The piece is based on a story following the journey of Hannah, mourning the death of her father. As she struggles to speak about her grief in the 7yrs that follow, she instead turns her focus to moping on the sofa and nights out on the town until finally she finds a way back to her mother. It was the second show I caught at the Fringe this year to avoid speech entirely, leaving a magnified emphasis on the visuals - which were bursting with originality and symbolic of the inability to see black and white at times of emotional difficulty.

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Facial expressions were at their best in this one, there was plenty of energy despite the subject matter and lack of dialogue. The show also featured lots (And lots) of whiteboards as important parts of the story were written for the audience to see - allowing us into our protagonist's world (and I applaud them on managing to write upside down)!

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We were drawn in with a high energy beginning, with enactments of memories of dad running everywhere, to work, to the shop, around the park. Dad loved to run. And our girl loved dad.

Line drawings were a huge part of the character of this show. Not only did it act to aid scene changes, explain narrative or act as scenery - it also had a kind of symbolic nature, representing the many childlike emotions that can present post-trauma. There was also something harrowing about seeing the solitary word 'cancer' written on one of the cards aided by an x-Ray like drawing of dad's insides. Despite the impact of the negative, these drawings also suggested a childish quality in our characters that gave them life and enabled us to really feel sympathy for them.

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I particularly enjoyed the club scene, with buckets of energy from our two actors (and buckets to catch the amount of sweat produced too), and with line drawings to represent the crowd and drinks - it was as clever visually as it was emotionally climatic. This was the moment for me that made the most sense when it comes to mourning - as we turn our energy to losing our minds and finesse the art of distraction. It's a routine I've practiced and one I could really connect with.

So it Goes... was brutally powerful. I am very much a woman of words and I find it much easier to write them down, rather than share them with anybody out loud. The show was a perfect embodiment of grief, of memory and of moving on. It was warm, it was fragile and it was human, which made it a hit at the Fringe this year and I hope on bigger stages to follow.

Find out more about the story behind the show here: http://www.ontheruntheatre.co.uk/#!current-production/cb3i

Dreams of A Life

We all dream of that life we wished we'd have led, we all dream of becoming someone better, or wealthier, but film-maker Carol Morley takes that dream one step further. She assumes the dream of Joyce Carol Vincent, a lady found dead in her flat having laid there for three whole years. Morley turns this hopelessly sad situation into a film about a young woman with lots of friends and lots of dreams, with vibrancy and life seeping through the screen.

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It is at heart, an art-film with an essence of docudrama to fill in the gaps of Joyce's story where there is no record. We do not meet her family. We do not know the whole story. In fact, there is a total lack of any solid evidence of how Joyce spent her time and how troubled she really was. Yet, amidst such a lack of information about her, we are presented with a film that is full of character and one that acts as a respectful memorial to her life.

Carol Morley 's affection for the story is evident in her production. The careful casting of the beautiful Zawe Ashton and the genuine shock of the contributors we meet along the way, on hearing about Joyce's fate almost draw us to keep watching. We want to know what they wish to know, how this beautiful, apparently life-loving girl, came to be forgotten.

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The aesthetics were perfect - shadowed rooms in which Joyce always carried a glow. SFX of dripping taps and old 80s music adding character even to stone walls. We have all had moments in our lives where we pretend to be happy, where we tell others (and ourselves) that we are fine, but there is a deep wound that Joyce was hiding and although we're never quite sure which of her experiences hurt her most, we cannot tear our eyes away from trying to work it out. We watch her miming to her beautiful reflection in the mirror, we hear recordings of her singing. Joyce is living and breathing in the film, without ever actually being there. As an audience we want to save her, to reach into the screen and to be her friend, for the story not to be real. We want her to be remembered and Morley in this, does beautifully. 

We find ourselves stunningly moved by a news article that we may have perhaps glanced over before. Suddenly the story is a life, and the life is one we care about.

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I can't say much more, but the intimate and tragically beautiful dramatisation of Vincent's life, carried by the painful interviews of those who knew her, is just a wonderful and respectful memorial, to a young woman who met with tragedy. It is one of the most incredible factual films I've seen in the last few years, particularly surprising as there is, as the situation suggests, a significant lack of fact. I feel as though we pay our respects to Joyce and many others like her we will never know about, when we watch this film.

Joyce Carole Vincent

Nostalgia for the Light

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There are 5 star reviews left, right and centre for this uniquely poetic Chilean documentary. Yet, for some reason, I don't share the same enthusiasm that everyone else presents. That is not to say that I disliked it, I just think it may be a little over-indulgent of the link between the two avenues the film explores.

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I certainly can't argue that the film is not unique. It is filled with poetic description and transcendent comparison between the universal search for 'how our world began' through astrophysics and the search for human remains in the Atacama desert following the Pinochet regime. The film follows the work of astronomers alongside their desert companions - the women who search for the remains of their loved ones, sifting tragically through dirt for traces of bone and mummified human body parts - all in the hope that they may find some closure in discovery. The film also explores how both parties became thwarted victims of the Pinochet regime, as Chileans became slaves of the desert and their only escape, astronomy, was banned as authorities believed that prisoners could escape by following the stars.

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The themes of loss, longing and hope are ones that are present from start to finish but I feel that impact is lost in favour of unnecessary poetry.  The first 35minutes of the film is purely narrated, with lingering images of inanimate objects, landscape and ordinate machinery. There is a single contributor, who does not offer much by way of insight, that our narrator has not already inferred. I feel that the opening to the film indulges too much in suggestive meaning, without at first setting the scene as to why the search that these people dedicate their lives to, is so important. This first half of the film left me searching for meaning amidst a desert of description and I was left willing for some let-up in the narration to rest my heavy eyelids.

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Finally at 40minutes in, we were relieved of duty and were allowed into the story of the 'people' over the 'poetry'. We are allowed into the lives of those who survived the regime: of an architect who memorised the layout of the camps, of a young astronomer, of a female astronomer whose parents disappeared under the regime, of the women who search endlessly through the sand. We are finally given that insight into why all of this imagery matters so much and it moves us. It's just a shame that it took us so long to get there.

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The film is unique in the way that it presents its interviews too. Director Patricio Guzman does not conform to common interview edit practice. Instead he allows the responses to come naturally. There are no cuts to shorten responses, no cutaways to take us away from the people - the film's slow pace finally syncs with it's contributors allowing us the time to evaluate their words and be moved by their passion. I think THE moment of the film for me was when we meet the elderly women who speak of their search for their relatives. There is no need for elaborate name-straps to identify who these women are, we know immediately. 70yr old Violeta Berrios, moved me to tears as she is asked, 'will you carry on searching?' and answers, 'for as long as I can'. She conveys so passionately how people ask her 'why we want bones...I want them so much...If I found him today and I were to die tomorrow, I would die happy. But I don't want to die. I don't want to die before I find him'. She is remarkable. The edit does not eliminate her contemplation, questioning, passion or repetition, adding to its complete emotional authenticity.

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The cinematography of the film shares it's moments of beauty also. In a desert, I would think it is quite the challenge to find unique and interesting shots of the vastness of endless sand but Guzman manages it well, merging it with shots of surviving concentration camp buildings, that are believed to have held approximately 300,000 people over the years of the regime (1973-1990). In 2011 the Chilean government recognised that over 35,000 of its people survived political imprisonment and torture - and that's just those who survived. The numbers are too large to comprehend and the secrecy surrounding where the remains of those killed during this time ended up, is still very much the norm. Slow panning shots of walls of the victims, clever editing between shots of the moon's surface and of imperfect human skulls, starry skies and sandy dunes, act as haunting reminders of the devastation of the past that continues into Chile's present. I will say that the stationary portrait shots seemed a little forced but with the poetic tone of the film, we manage to fill in the gaps ourselves.

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And so, for 90mins we have immersed ourselves in the slow and constant search for answers in the Atacama Desert. Poetry allows a tone that the stories of its contributors respond to. Although I believe that the first half of the film was unnecessarily long and over-indulgent, I feel that I appreciated the second half of it more, having sat through it. I do not believe that 'Nostalgia for the Light' is as masterful, nor as remarkable as other reviews have deemed it but that is certainly not to say that it has no value at all. It is painfully truthful and hopelessly unending, reflecting the torment that those within film face every single day. It is a memorial to those who were lost, and a tribute to those who carry on searching.