![]() ![]() I love Davies' use of music (particularly that inaugural arpeggiating piano line that inspires instant melancholic swooning) as much as his perfectly timed silences, and the selection of footage is often unbearably poignant (archival monochrome snapshots of mundane street scenes do the film far more favors than the artifact-y digital video), but his fiction films have always felt, for lack of a better term, more universally accessible and less regionally airtight. Whether it's the candid reflections on specifically Liverpoolian rites of passage, the sometimes too-florid (for my taste, at least) baritone narration of Davies himself, or the identity of the filmmaker as a homosexual working-class outcast (something only so much empathetic guesswork can account for), I've always felt a certain opaqueness here. Of Time and the City (2008): Upon a second viewing, my admiration for this film remains at a slight remove. Initially a charming offhand moment about the importance of family values, her words start to retrospectively solidify as a metaphor for stubborn conservatism in the south. The title comes from a song sung by McElwee's grandmother in a rocking chair in which she croons about idling around in her own backyard. A black beekeeper that works for McElwee's father as a groundskeeper is one of the key subjects, a quirky elderly man whose discomfort at the superficially compassionate belittlement directed his way by the family is barely concealed. On the surface, the film documents the family's gathering for a wedding in the neighborhood country club, but McElwee's more interested in the stuff that occurs around the main event, the in-between moments that highlight the casual racial, gender, and power dynamics of the community. After years of living and planting the seeds for his impressive career in Boston, McElwee's return to his North Carolina home is completely free of any overarching sentimentality the film's prologue, which introduces McElwee's sarcastic narration and establishes the bitter father-son relationship that is one of the movie's backbones, quickly snuffs out the possibility of any nostalgic warmth. ![]() ![]() Backyard (1984): One of Ross McElwee's earliest attempts at autobiographical documentary, Backyard is a surprisingly accomplished piece of work, already featuring a subtle display of familial eccentricity dovetailing with larger socio-political issues. ![]()
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