Of Time and the City

This evocative mood piece will resonate strongly with those who have seen Terence Davies' autobiographical film Distant Voices, Still Lives, a haunting portrait of a family in post-war Liverpool, which is widely regarded as one of the best British films of the past twenty years. This documentary tracing the history of Liverpool in the post WWII years is a deeply personal film for Davies, who explores the way in which the city has changed over 60 years. Drawing upon his own memories of his childhood and a wealth of archival footage, Davies explores the dichotomy of Liverpool – the character of the old city and the impersonal nature of the new – and the conflict between his Catholic upbringing and his homosexuality. Davies reveals how his love of movies and the wrestling helped save him. His rich, erudite and poetic narration adds a rich texture to the material, which explores how the working class city of Liverpool has lost much of its sense of identity over time. The film is filled with anecdotes drawing upon his childhood memories, all of which are beautifully illustrated by archival footage accompanied by popular songs from the era. This richly evokes a time and a place. Davies draws upon poetry, popular songs from yesteryear as source material for many of his quotes and literary readings. Davies also displays a wonderfully iconoclastic sense of humor, as he colorfully expresses his disdain for Liverpool's favorite sons The Beatles, and his contempt for the Royal family. The film is a melancholic memoir filled with a bitter tone of loss and regret. Of Time And The City is a much more accessible film than Guy Maddin's recent obscure My Winnipeg, which similarly attempted a nostalgic look at the city of his birth.

Of Time and the City is a very personal portrait of the city of Liverpool. Created by Liverpool-born director Terence Davies, funded by Northwest Vision and Media and released in the year that the city holds the status of European Capital of Culture, this film charts the tumultuous story of Liverpool in the time-frame of the director's life. The city's story slides from the high hopes of the post-war era to the ominous onset of the Korean War, plunging into the malaise of tower block housing and declining industries before the gradual revival and regeneration of the late twentieth century.

The film consists largely of archive footage from across the past 60 years, book-ended with some new-filmed footage orchestrated by Davies himself. The old film used in Of Time and the City is superbly edited into a continuously evolving story. There are some astonishing images here, from the vibrancy of the absurdly overcrowded 1950's waterfront to the decay and destruction of council housing in subsequent decades. What really sets this film apart, however, is the unique delivery of Davies's commentary. By turns poetical, polemical and romantic, Davies elevates this film beyond a documentary to create a stirring work of art.

Although often bitter and iconoclastic, Davies possesses a terrific dry sense of humour, which he directs against some of Liverpool's most-recognised exports, including the Beatles and the city's famous football club, as well as the current Queen Elizabeth (or 'the Betty Windsor show' as he terms it). But beyond this invective there is great warmth in Davies's film: it is much more a celebration of the people of Liverpool than the known sights and sounds of Liverpool. The emphasis of the film footage – old and new – is on the lives of the ordinary people living in the city: children playing in crowded streets, families at the seaside, great crowds at sporting events. Davies sets these ordinary goings on to a soundtrack of superb classical music and intersperses them with numerous borrowed lines from literary greats, adapting high art to celebrate the lives of the people in Liverpool. Throughout the film there are also modest fragments of Davies's own story, which emphasises the deeply personal nature of this film.

Of Time and the City is not a methodical history of Liverpool's post-war history – such a film would have to run for a lot longer – and it is shot through with Davies's strong opinions and acerbic wit. His delivery is often challenging to follow, but it makes for a vivid and engrossing film whose depth and complexity merits repeated viewing.

Although I will proceed to contradict myself, this is one of those films that you will either hate or love. Over archive footage of Liverpool, Terrance Davies narrates his personal recollections and reflections of the city along with its history and changes from his birth onwards. It is a personal film for him no doubt because it is not so much of a "documentary" as it is a piece of poetry over images – it would not be out of place as an art installation somewhere (if it were structured and delivered differently). It is hard to review this because for some people the voice, the words and the images will combine to create a wonderfully personal experience that they are drawn into, more of an experience than just a film. However to other viewers (who will be unfairly told they "don't get it" or "aren't smart enough" and should "go back to Transformers 2") this will come over as pointless, annoying and right up itself.

And here is my contradiction, because I fell somewhere in the middle of this, wanting to love it but ultimately finding myself totally on the outside looking in. Throughout the whole film I was finding it sporadically interesting, whether in the footage or the narration there was stuff that stopped me getting bored. However I also had this niggling feeling that the film was being deliberately obtuse in what it was doing and that, in being so personal, Davies had forgotten that this was a film being sold to an audience, not just something he is making for free. By this I mean that there isn't anything that offers the viewer an olive branch to get into it – if you don't love it early then it will likely just leave you behind. At times the film does smack heavily of being pretentious for the sake of it and, while the negative voices and overly negative here, I can see the point of those that attack it as such.

Perhaps that is fine though, not every film will appeal to everyone and this is an art film that will always draw a small audience no matter where it is shown. I know many people loved it and believe me when I say that I did want to but somehow it just didn't work for me. I was left feeling remote from the subject of any scene and, although some aspects still interested me, at worst it did come over as a little pretentious. Worth a look for something different but it is certainly not for everyone.

We kind of expect our artists to be haunted by demons, it is in tacit understanding that in their art we'll find the template to overcome ours. That, in visiting the dark place which is shared among all of us, we can defer to them for guidance, for the light that dissolves the shadows.

Here we have the personal memoirs of one such artist. We see the demons, the hurt and anger generated by repressed homosexuality or a suffocating religion without answers. But they're up on the screen whole as dragged from the bitterest place, to be vexed than overcome. The manner is petulant, childish. Of course I agree with Davies for example about the obsolete, useless monarchy sucking the blood of the people, but how am I for the better by listening to his obvious, venomous attack upon it? I can get that in every forum online pending the royal wedding, from casual talk on the street.

And what am I to make of the boy's dismay at the silence of god? Which the boy now not-quite grown up, perceives as indictment and completely ignores what comfort he was offered at the time by prayer. Surely, life is more complex than this.

When by the end of this we get the realization of what matters, a life lived in the present without hope or love, it rings hollow because it hasn't been embodied in the work itself, which is riddled with an old man's angst.

And this is not all of it. The elegy to the city and the time that shuffled it is too tricly, oh-so-sombre, so filled with yearnings. What emotion is here is so obvious, that Malick appears subtle by comparison to it. So easily, quickly digestible that in trying to sate so much, to gorge in it, it doesn't sate at all.

What little of this works is the symphony of the city. The kind of film they were making in 1920's Berlin or Moscow to eulogize the booming architecture. With the twist that here, it is the uniquely British genius and propensity for creating a dismal urban landscape that appeals. The drab, grey routine. But I'd rather get this from The Singing Detective, which weaves it into a multifaceted story than a simple nostalgia. Or get the same experience Davies wants for his films from Zerkalo.

I suspect this will fare better for the people who share his vexations with religion and society, and who can relax in them. Me, I can't relax in anything without consideration for what the images and voices in it mean. With movies that transport, I'm always interested in the place they transport to. This is not one of those places.

I'm not from Liverpool, Scots actually, but have lived alongside it for forty years and it is one of the most fascinating cities architecturally, politically, socially and historically that one can come across. Even today its image and the mere mention of the name Liverpool can split the UK into two opposing factions. It has provided this country with some of the best (and some of the worst!) politicians, singers,poets, musicians, writers, statesmen, sportsmen and women, comedians, medicos, actors...you name it! It also had the blight of some of the worst housing, past and modern. It's had to put up with the blinkered meddling of inner-city planners since the fifties trying to rip the heart out of this jewel of a city. Fortunately some 'good men and true' had the vision and foresight from the 70's onwards to put the brakes on some of the excesses. But unforgivably, those inner-city planners took Scottie Road to the knackers yard instead of putting it out to stud.

Terence Davies casts a weary and at times tearful eye over the broad expanse of the city that shaped him. His homosexuality and the trauma that his deep catholic upbringing imposed on him made him a cynic. But that is not a bad thing. Cynicism is part of all of us and Davies imbibes his cynicism with mistrust and love and affection for a city that is in his marrow. Like the Scots, all true Liverpudlians, where e're they travel, are products of their upbringing and are never ashamed to admit it.

Watch this film with the sound off and it merely becomes a travelogue of the best and worst of this place. Watch and listen to Davies's commentary though, and the film takes on a vibrancy that fairly pulsates. Liverpool, through this film, becomes a city that breeds high blood pressure. For every beautiful building there is a slum, for every shopping mall there is a 'Bluecoat Chambers', for every wino begging on the subway there is a wisecracking Scouser trying to sell you something on the open-air markets, for every tragedy there is a joyous moment, for every factory that closes there is an entrepreneur starting up.

This polyglot of a city breathes..and it breathes life into its people. Walk down some of the old original cobbled alleys off Dale Street or Whitechapel (how did the planners miss them!!) and you can hear this city despairingly whisper into your ear.."Don't forget me!"

Davies captures the city and its contradictions and does it beautifully through his careful choice of film and especially through his words.

For him it's a love affair and like all such things there is hurt, despair, complacency, anger and moments of pure joy. He can hate his city with a vengeance but it flows through his veins. He knows it and he knows he'll never escape from it.

This is HIS Valentines card to HIS city and he has signed his name on it.

For the rest of us, this is Liverpool drawn on a wide canvas but in such sharp detail that it needs more than one viewing.

Highly recommended.