"It’s a country which
for centuries has enjoyed a special fame, there’s nowhere else like it on
Earth…"
A few seem to have confused this film with a conservative
view of old England but the more I view Arcadia
the more it’s clearly a call to ground ourselves: the answer being “in the
soil” and not the rituals and hierarchies that have developed around ownership
and those who work on the land.
Paul Wright’s Arcadia
is interpretable as a political film and definitely a post-Brexit one, but it’s
deeper than even that as it references people being disconnected from the land
by aggressive owners for whom sentimental connections are to profit and not
place.
But Arcadia is
subtler than propaganda and allows the viewer to make their own mind up – would
you rather be dancing on the rocks by yourself or in the city amongst the crush;
would you rather be dancing in a crowd or charged by police on a march? The
film is full of stark juxtapositions but always with the reservation that
“olden times” were often ‘orrific times, there’s always a chilling moment to
pop the rose-coloured bubble.
Arcadia is not a
gentle compilation of nice old images but there’s undoubtedly hope amongst the oft-quoted
folk-horror. How can there not be with the uncanny power of Anne Brigg’s
glorious vocals demonstrating the purity of honest human expression and a score
from Will Gregory and Adrian Utley that is so well referenced tonally. I love
the sequence where three young tykes roll down a slope on their favourite
trespass spot and suddenly we have a glam rock beat - it’s 1972-cheeky!
“Does your mum know
you play down here?”
“She will do wi’you
lot showin’ this on telly!”
Gregory (from Goldfrapp) and Utley (Portishead) have
experience of lengthy composition from their magnificent work on Carl Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) and with a song-track from Wright to guide them, set about interpreting
his film with a mix of modern and traditional instrumentation along with found
sounds and music. As I’ve said before, Anne Briggs’ songs are the soul of the
score and Uttley was able to contact her through contemporary Norma Waterson
(wife of Martin Carthy and Eliza Carthy’s mum!) in her rural Scottish retreat,
she hasn’t performed since the early 70s but gave her permission for three
songs to be used.
Apart from sending a chill down my spine every time I hear
her sing, Briggs gives Arcadia a deep
connection all of her own – few have channelled folk spirit like she has. But
the composers wanted to respond to what Utley calls a “sensory journey” with a
variety of styles and genres and so, whilst we also have Becky Unthank’s modern
folk purity there’s also Daniel Avery’s stunning Drone Logic – techno/IDM or whatever you kids call this stuff
nowadays – accompanying raves of all ages.
The dance is a key part of Arcadia and whether it’s acid house, punk, Morris or psychedelia we
all love to move, hitting down on the ground in eternal rhythms, a little
faster here and there but essentially the same animal celebration. Sometimes we
dance for the May Queen, or we fling burning barrels at the Beltane fire
festival, we dance in protest but mostly we dance to connect.
Wright says he always tries to use images from “all angles
and even from different states…” he didn’t want to show just filmed theatre. His
source material was a mix of documentary and drama with films like Herostratus (1967), Winstanley (1975) and Anchoress
(1993) mixed in carefully so as not to drag the narrative off course. Literally
thousands of films were considered and around 100 made the film with Cecil
Hepworth’s Alice in Wonderland (1903)
and A Day in The Hayfields (1904)
being amongst the earliest. Hippies old and younger are featured from Pioneers of Nudism (1938) to Tribe of the Sun (1972) and there are
dark tones indeed from An Untitled Film
(1967) and The Watchers (1969).
Whilst Arcadia is,
as the BFI’s Archive Projects Co-ordinator, Simon McCallum says, “…one of the
most ambitious and painstaking exercises in archival repurposing to date…” it
also makes you want to seek out more of these source films.
I’ve already ordered the BFI DVD of Chris Newby’s The Anchoress (1993) which is used to
bookend Arcadia – it’s a tale of religious ecstasy in 14th century
Surrey and stars Natalie Morse, Toyah Willcox, Pete Postlethwaite and Christopher
Eccleston buy it!
Natalie Morse in The Anchoress |
In short, Arcadia
is *exactly* the kind of thing you’d hope the BFI would do: a film that
highlights the wealth of content in its archive and which makes something bold,
beautiful and new. It’s challenging and sometimes disturbing but if we’re not
disturbed we’re sometimes only sleeping.
Arcadia is
available now on BFI DVD and comes complete with a handsome illustrated
booklet featuring writing by Simon McCallum, Stanley Donwood and Adrian Utley,
director Paul Wright interviewed by Adam Scovell, and film credits –
fascinating for those trying to play spot-the-clip although it doesn’t list
them all.
There are some fascinating extras too including the trailer,
a post-screening Q&A at BFI Southbank with Paul Wright, Adrian Utley and
Will Gregory, some great silent shorts including ''Oppin' Makes You Earty!'
(1925) about hop-picking in Kent and coverage of Shetland's Up Helly Aa in Old
Norse Vikings Festival (1927).
Also featured is Once We Were Four... (1942) a potential
Watership-downer for young rabbits plus Peter and Ruby (1973) traditional
Dartmoor farmers facing up to modern life: what happened after them?
“She realised that
answer lay within her all along… everything is connected… the past is gone, the
future’s unwritten…”
No comments:
Post a Comment