Patrick Keiller's 'London'

nomos

Administrator
Finisterre is a huge (and greatly inferior) rip-off but isn't London an even bigger rip-off of Sans Soleil?
you could call both of them speculative essay films but it doesn't make london a rip off.

luka said:
its a very funny film. uneasy bickering sexual relationship, thats funny.
this and the subtle SF element - "...robinson's been experimenting with time travel again."

i've watched it with people who've been put off by its 'preciousness' but that's a sleight of hand by keillor. the genius of scofield's narration is that his tone might evoke any pompous, trad BBC narrator but the words, and the angered lapses of composure, betray that. from the beginning it's full of contempt for english tradition/myth/smallness. that immediately undoes any shreds of sentimentalism in those long lingering shots. they're part of an anti-sentimental exercise in penetrating 'the problem of london.'
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
"no its not. its not composed of stills for a start."
Nor is Sans Soleil.

"you could call both of them speculative essay films but it doesn't make london a rip off"
They both use the exact same device of a poetic story from an unseen and unheard originator - Robinson in London, whatever he is called in Sans Soleil (probably Robertson if it's as similar as the rest of the film) - having his story told by a faux-naive narrator who purports to be merely a mouthpiece.
 

craner

Beast of Burden
Actually, the novel is on hold for the moment while I prepare a vicuous polemic against the Welsh Language lobby, for local publication. I'm going to rip open some deep wounds in the "Mother country".
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Actually, the novel is on hold for the moment while I prepare a vicuous polemic against the Welsh Language lobby, for local publication. I'm going to rip open some deep wounds in the "Mother country".

Is that Micra for 'both vicious and vacuous'?
 

baboon2004

Darned cockwombles.
I watched most of this last night (was very tired rather than bored of the film, so gave up 2/3rds of the way through). Really wonderful.

Best thing about Dissensus - finding new things you never would have thought of looking for before. It's great. :D
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
I went to the Patrick Keiller film night thing on Boleyn Road on Thurs but unfortunately got there too late to see any except the last film called The End - basically London again but in Europe with a German sounding narrator and only eighteen minutes long. I think anyone who enjoyed London would like that too. It dates from 1986 just three years after Sans Soleil I think - I'm wondering if the other films were in the same vein and earlier, if so I guess I'd have to retract my statement about Keiller copying Marker.
 

mistersloane

heavy heavy monster sound
As far as I know, Keiller was really inspired by Marker and has been pretty open about the influence. I wish I'd been able to go to that but I got tootache and my face swole up like a chipmunk and wasn't feeling too gregarious.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
Pink Narcissus is the one where that rent boy ponces about in his flat threatening to strip for about forty-five minutes right?
 

labrat

hot on the heels of love
"James Bidgood’s Pink Narcissus (1971), surely the most lavish and lyrical film ever shot in one apartment, and also the single most extraordinary film I saw all year." sez posh art magazine Freize, but yes thats the one!
 

mistersloane

heavy heavy monster sound
Was reading about Weldon Kees, the US poet who disappeared in the 50s, over Xmas, and he had a series of poems featuring a fictional character called Robinson. I presume that's (one of the...) where's that keiller got the name from.

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/robinson/

Lol @ Pink Narcissus. Gay Men used to to show it to me in the 80s as a kindof seduction tool, and I'd be like 'No, no, BLACK Narcissus!". It's porn-lite, horrible film.
 

IdleRich

IdleRich
There's a link between Pink Narcissus and Black Narcissus (right?) but I'm fucked if I can tell what it is.
 

STN

sou'wester
yeah, a Weldon Kees one (didn't know he disappeared) is used as an epigraph in Chris Petit's novel Robinson (Keiller and Petit are quite closely linked, I think). It's all to do with Crusoe, isn't it?
 
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