Of Time and the City

I went to see Of Time and the City recently, directed and narrated by Terence Davies. It's his paen to the Liverpool of his childhood, and was received with great acclaim at Cannes in the summer.
I went with a group of friends, one of whom was someone who'd grown up in Liverpool at around the same time, the post-WWII period. He was deeply moved by the film, appreciating Davies's grasp of Liverpool, not as a geographical entity, but as a place of imagination and feeling. I feel very much the same about Oxford - the place where you grew up becomes part of your DNA, a place that you feel rather than see. I visited Oxford a couple of years ago - the first time for quite a while. I'd left at the age of 32, after spending virtually my whole life there, and had only returned a few times, but walking round the streets of the city, it was as if I knew every paving stone, every brick in the wall. Even though much in the city has changed beyond recognition, everything is still there, not just in my memory, but in my unconscious, in every fibre of my being.

So I recognised where Davies was coming from, and so did my friend. On Mark Kermode's film review slot on Radio 5, he talked about the torrent of mail he'd received after he'd praised the film to the skies the other week. Many people had gone to see it after hearing his recommendation, but had ended up bored, or hating it. Though there were some who'd loved it. Davies's voice was a problem for some, and it's not a normal one - like other Liverpudlians he had elocution lessons (Beryl Bainbridge is another) as the L'pool accent was seen as a massive handicap before the Beatles came along and made it fashionable. So his voice is fruity and posh, with an acerbic, but yearning tone which encapsulated the act of memory, of return, of looking back, perfectly
The film is a collection of found footage woven together to form a tapestry of Liverpool then and now. And that's basically it, though I cannot overemphasise that it's actually much, much more. I will certainly buy the DVD when it's released as I think it will be a film that I'll return to over and over again. Thank you, Terence