Monday 27 November 2006

Film: A Canterbury Tale

I love the work of The Archers, the writing-directing team of Pressburger and Powell that worked as maverick outsiders within the British film system in the 1940s-50s. Their stylised films (emotionally as well as visually) bucked the mainstream (kitchen sinks, costume escapism, unthinking patriotism, etc) and produced a highly-charged mixture that approached a 'gesamtkunstwerk' ("total art work") seeing deeply into the British psyche whilst also creating something rich and strange.

But this is the second time that I've dozed off in A Canterbury Tale, towards the end, therefore not quite understanding how things got from 'there' to 'there'. But the journey that I've travelled on with these pilgrims has been highly enjoyable - plus there's a killer jump-cut at the beginning, representing temporal and psychological distance, rivalling (and inspiring?) Kubrick's famous bone/weapon-to-spaceship in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

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