The spectacular views of Liverpool play first fiddle in Of Time and the City
By Anthony Buchanan
With his enduring symphonic structures and themes of memories, Terence Davies has become one of the era's most important filmmakers. This is astonishing, considering he has done so with only nine released films.
Of Time and the City takes Davies' wide scope to personal dimensions and, for the most part, it's effective. The film is a multilayered meditation on the filmmaker's childhood home of Liverpool, composed of archival and personal footage from the 1920s to the present. The various episodes are connected through Davies' own occasionally overdramatic narration, which includes poem fragments and personal essays. In the opening of the film, his ironic and grandiose depiction of colorful church interiors suggests ambiguity. From there, we move on to footage of the crumbling city itself.
He pairs conflicting poetic quotes to create a sense of grandiosity—for example, borrowing from Voltaire: "If Liverpool did not exist, it would have to be invented," he states. A moment later, spoken fragments from Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Ozymandias" suggest the inevitable fall of the empire of which Davies' childhood home was part.
Davies establishes his heavy roots in Catholicism, from which the only relief was escape to the cinema, sports and wrestling matches. He mixes decaying and new celluloid film, which is striking and discordant. Pious Catholic priests stand in relief to a black-masked wrestler, whom Davies identifies as "the world, the flesh and the Devil." Through stories, the adolescent Davies is formed, yet the narration is too elusive at times to pin him down. Davies delights in countering the viewer's expectations of his life's events. The viewers are thwarted, for example, when this repressed free spirit declares that rock 'n' roll, the archetypal liberator of his generation, actually drove him away from popular music and deeper into his love of classical music.
However, Davies and the people of the city he observes are oftentimes secondary to the backdrop of the city, a ploy that works only at times. The foreground visual character is the metropolis itself: The buildings, somber and decrepit, depicted in varying shades of light, do evoke emotional substance. Empty streets and long shots of tunnels are enough to express Davies' fear of lost connection with the past. The lack of human activity, in contrast to the historical shots of thriving crowds, is powerfully mournful. These images speak to a deeper truth than Davies' poetic narration, which occasionally loses cohesion and becomes wandering and dull, especially in the second half of the film.
The closing sequences are random and uninspiring, even if Davies regains some poetic dignity. Despite its faults, the film exudes deep personal meaning and, in the end, its bravery deserves a look.
Of Time and the City
Directed and Written by Terence Davies
Narration by Terence Davies
The Screen
74 min.
PG
