ROBINSON IN SPACE
October 28th, 2008 adminI was interested to see Patrick Keiller’s excellent film Robinson in Space (1997) included in The Guardian’s 1000 Artworks To See Before You Die (a series which is running all this week in the newspaper).
“Sitting comfortably, I open my copy of The Revolution of Everyday Life.” So begins Keiller’s video take of a “peripatetic study of the problem of England” conducted by the deadpan Robinson and his long-suffering mate. A mysterious advertising agency has tasked Robinson with investigating the ‘problem of England’. He and the narrator embark on a series of seven journeys across England, inspired by Daniel Defoe‘s Tour through the Whole Island of Great Britain, based on Defoe’s travels as a spy in the 1720s. Paul Scofield narrates a series of illuminating snippets of information as the itinerant camera focuses on one provincial backwater after another.
Guardian writer Robert Clark describes the film as “like being lucky enough to get stuck on a train next to somebody’s utterly erudite and slightly potty grandfather. If you sometimes get fed up with the state of England, watch this. It won’t change a thing, other than cheering you up no end.”
Another film I watched recently was Gallivant (1996) by filmmaker Andrew Kötting. Gallivant is a 6,000-mile journey zig-zagging around the coast of Britain, which is both an experimental travelogue and an intensely personal story. Kötting begins the journey to bring Gladys, his 85-year old grandmother, and Eden, his 7-year old daughter, together. Gladys’s stamina is limited, and Eden has Joubert’s syndrome: she’s not expected to live to adulthood. Both are fragile, and the journey is an opportunity which may not be repeated.
This road trip film is part homage to the unsung eccentrics who make up our national identity, and part tribute to the bonds of family. It’s a tender film, definitely worth watching.