Of Time and the City (*1/2)

Outside of England, the only thing people probably know about the city of Liverpool is that it was the hometown of the Beatles. After seeing this film, you will know two things, the other being that it was also the hometown of writer-director Terence Davies, best known for his 2000 adaptation of Edith Wharton’s House of Mirth. Not so much a history of the city as Davies’s nostalgic audiovisual memoir, mostly of the late 1940s through about the mid-1960s, it is clearly a deeply personal, carefully crafted film. Nonetheless, this doesn’t prevent it from being a dreadful bore.

The Beatles do show up, but for less time than a 1970 song (“He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother”) by Manchester’s Hollies is used, oddly, to illustrate footage of returning Korean War veterans. According to the narration Davies pompously provides, he had by 1970 lost interest in popular music, as well as his faith in God and queen. Religion and monarchy bring out snide sarcasm (the queen and her husband are “Betty and Phil”), but that’s at least a relief from the poetic pretention that Davies otherwise employs, e.g., blankets that “warm but give no comfort”—why’s that?

Primarily, the visuals are street scenes of ordinary citizens, quaintly dressed, that do convey the sense of long ago, longer even than the 50 or 60 years ago from which they actually date. In a few cases, important persons or events or prominent buildings are seen, but little information is imparted. Apparently it is enough for us to know that these are the scenes Davies recalls, bittersweetly but mostly fondly, in his mind. I longed at least for some on-screen descriptions. Although the footage skips about in time, the newest—dreary public housing in the 1960s and 1970s, casually dressed diners and shiny buildings in newly filmed scenes—is shown, by way of contrast, toward the end. The newer the footage, the more likely it is to be in color and of greater technical quality; this has the unintended effect of suggesting steady improvement, though if anything Davies intends the opposite.

It seems wrong to slam a work that was obviously a labor of love, and made with obvious attention. But there are ways to make a work personal while engaging the audience. For most viewers, watching this may be a chore.

IMDB link

viewed 4/5/09 at Bridge (Philadelphia Film Festival) and reviewed 4/6/09