Film: London
Director: Patrick Keiller
Country: UK
Released: June 1994
Runtime: 85 minutes
Genre: Surrealism
Studio: British Film Institute (BFI)
Influenced: Chris Petit, Ben Rivers, Guy Maddin, Clio Barnard, Andrew Kötting
Patrick Keiller's London is a unique and potent mix of surrealism, essay film and documentary. German writer W. G. Sebald and British architect-cum-director Keiller were both responsible for a revival of the "psychogeography" trend in the 1990s, a term first coined by the Situationist movement in the 1950s. In simple terms, "psychogeography" involves exploring urban spaces to uncover hidden histories and emotions connected to the built environment. Keiller's film exemplifies this concept by using Robinson's journey through London to reveal the city's concealed narratives. Robinson is the fictional central character of the film, while the narrator (voiced by legendary Oscar-winning actor Paul Scofield) guides the audience through Robinson's journeys and observations on the city of London. Peter Ackroyd’s epic London: The Biography shares the film's mix of factual grit and poetic flight of fancy, while later writers like Iain Sinclair and Will Self, and more recently YouTuber and author John Rogers, are inheritors of this psychogeographical tradition.
In terms of links to directors past, Keiller was clearly influenced by the work of Humphrey Jennings and Chris Marker, the latter's films also combining still images with fantastical narratives. Both directors have a strong sense of the absurd, in Keiller's case where it lies in the absurd tension between art and capitalism; for example, in one memorable scene, the narrator quotes Baudelaire on the subject of romanticism while we watch an inflatable Ronald McDonald rocking in the wind on top of a McDonald’s drive-thru. Although the film catalogues the many challenges London faces in the year 1992, including being continually "under siege from a suburban [Tory] government”, the "Black Wednesday" European monetary crisis and IRA bombings, it's not a film about the city's economic and industrial decline. What's remarkable about the UK's capital is how well its economy – particularly the City of London and Canary Wharf – continues to operate in the face of a myriad of political and social challenges. Instead, the question Keiller is asking in the film is, what quality of life do the city's inhabitants enjoy?
Robinson embarks on a series of excursions across London, visiting various sites and landmarks across all four corners of one of the world's greatest cities, while offering commentary on its history, architecture, politics and culture. Many of my favourite London places, including Elephant & Castle, Arnold Circus, the Geffrye Museum and the Oval cricket ground, feature in the film and the long, lingering shots of the capital combined with the surreal narration make the film completely mesmerising. There’s not a nostalgia for something there was, more a melancholy for something that could have been – a more utopian, egalitarian London. One of the spiritual figures that inspired the film is Daniel Defoe and his character Robinson Crusoe, while Keiller also found inspiration for the project by gathering the impressions of London written down by visiting artists and intellectuals over the centuries. These include a particular focus on French surrealist poets such as Charles Baudelaire, Arthur Rimbaud and Guillaume Apollinaire, but also lesser-known thinkers such as Russian socialist writer Alexander Herzen, who is quoted:
"There is no town in the world which is more adapted for training one away from people and training one into solitude than London. The manner of life, the distances, the climate, the very multitude of the population in which personality vanishes, all this together with the absence of Continental diversions conduces to the same effect. One who knows how to live alone has nothing to fear from the tedium of London. The life here, like the air here, is bad for the weak, for the frail, for one who seeks a prop outside himself, for one who seeks welcome, sympathy, attention; the moral lungs here must be as strong as the physical lungs, whose task it is to separate oxygen from the smoky fog."
– From Ends & Beginnings, ed. & intr. Aileen Kelly (Oxford University Press, 1985)
Melancholic, literary observations like the one above are read out by the narrator, adding depth to the film's exploration of London's cultural and intellectual history, soundtracked by the music of Beethoven and Brahms. Robinson's musings touch on a wide range of topics, including the economic disparities in London, the influence of globalisation and the city's changing social fabric. He often comments on the impact of urban planning and development on the city's character. Keiller trained as an architect and we see his fascination with buildings throughout the film, and professionals in the fields of urban planning have found inspiration in the film when considering the impact of urban design on the lived experience of a city. Patrick Keiller's London also gained recognition at various film festivals and received awards for its cinematography and direction. The film's sequel, Robinson In Space (1997), expands the problem of London to the problem of England, and Keiller completed the trilogy in 2010 with Robinson In Ruins.
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