London **** (1994, voice of Paul Scofield) – Classic Movie Review 5762

Writer-director and cameraman Patrick Keiller’s personal and politicial 1994 feature-length debut is a witty and penetrating British documentary, a travelogue cum essay film mounting a virulent attack on the state of early to mid-Nineties London. There is an incisive, pessimistic view of the capital’s present and future, as seen through the bleary eyes of a fictional character as narrator (the mesmerically sonorous voice of the late Oscar winner Paul Scofield).

It is an inspiring film first and foremost of striking visual flair, the camera unexpectedly finding a secret beauty or hidden meaning in every event and object it gazes upon, whether it is an old London Routemaster bus, a Vauxhall park gate or the Brent Cross shopping centre. The commentary on the pictures is spiced with clarity of observation and analysis, undercut with a cool good humour, and backed by the stately music of Beethoven and Brahms. That gives the film a further melancholic, end-of-millennium feel to match the arresting images.

It was shot tirelessly throughout the general election year of 1992 by director Keiller, who seems to have been everywhere and probed every nook and cranny in the city. The screen pours forth extraordinary images in a cornucopia of the mostly mundane, peppered with moments of national importance – the the royal annual birthday parade of Trooping the Colour, the election of John Major replacing Margaret Thatcher as Tory Prime Minister, Her Majesty the Queen re-opening the refurbished Leicester Square, the aftermaths of a series of horrific IRA bombings, a miners’ protest march against pit closures – all shot with equal weight as they could have been viewed by the average Londoner.

This unique ‘visual essay’ is a seductive, eloquent experiment that makes London in its degraded state as a tourist-magnet theme park seem paradoxically beguiling.

And there is another keen irony in the fact that this anti-establishment, monarchy-mocking, socialist view film is made for the government-funded British Film Institute, whose patron is none other than HRH the Prince of Wales.

Looking back in 2017, it is interesting now to find the Conservative Government of 1992 rocked with confusion, fear and doubt. So much has changed, maybe, but so much is the same. London is superficially very different, but still essentially the same. Keiller’s pessimistic statements and predictions have proved very accurate.

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 5762

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