Sleep Furiously

This last film in our “summer season” didn’t get a good review from Philip French in the Observer, but I liked it. In fact, if a film gets a review from me, it’ll be because I enjoyed it. Like dovegreyreader (link on the right) I see no point in trashing other people’s best efforts.

The film is a documentary by Gideon Koppel chronicling a year in the life of the Welsh rural community of Trefeurig, which is not too far from here, though I don’t know it. It’s beautifully filmed; long still shots of changing weather patterns and landscape; time lapse; delicate and beautiful close-ups of men and women at work doing ordinary tasks, baking, woodwork, weaving; ravishing colours and textures. Gideon Koppel is not afraid to let the camera linger, as on one shot of a departing tractor and the sheepdog who stands and watches it go. There is no commentary. The music is sparingly applied, unobtrusive piano-based themes by the band Aphex Twin. Koppel clearly loves the community and the landscape, and offers this film as an elegiac tribute to a way of life under threat. Some of the issues are the same ones that we have tackled here in the past six years. Some of the conversations are word for word the same as exchanges I have had with local people.

The locals are only too well aware of the precarious nature of the community. This is especially true of the small primary school. We see scenes of the school. We see the community meetings held to try to dissuade the authorities from closing it.

Koppel’s mother appears throughout the film. Towards the end he quotes her; “It is only when I sense the end of things that I have the courage to speak; the courage, but not the words”.

One is left with a strong sense of the grandeur of the landscape as well as the strength, dignity and patience of ordinary working people. Many will watch and enjoy the television series “Victorian Farm” (also filmed not far from here in the other direction). This is an accurate and affectionate documentation of a real contemporary rural community. I wish more people were likely to see it.