Dir. Simon Pummell, 2003, UK, 83 mins
A collection of images edited together - from home videos, from anonymous war photography, from scientific films - that somehow form a story. The story is of the human experience in its cycle from birth, through violence and death, to the transcendence of the soul from the physical before returning to the beginning of birth. But would the story that I've come away with match with that of anyone else who's seen the film? And then there's the website, which takes what I can only describe as the Bodysong 'experience' onto a whole new level of interactivity and personal response. In other words, this is such an emotive, subjective film that it is difficult to analyse objectively. Bodysong begins with a series of beautiful, otherworldly images that turn out to be charting the process of fertilisation. The progression from birth through early life and growing up is achieved through matched shots linking the various phrases; a toddler learning to ride a bike cuts to a kid riding a bike. Using these conventions, Simon Pummell lends this unconventional film a fluidity and a narrative - a narrative that we all share: birth, growth, sex, violence, death and dreams, to borrow from the website. This fluidity is also created through the astounding score by Jonny Greenwood (of Radiohead fame) such as the jarring strings of the birth sequences, which combined so perfectly with the images as to make me physically nauseous at times. It definitely removed any romantic notions of birth that I may have picked up from those other films that delicately cut away from the gory bits. Then there's the soft, emotive strain as the kids grow to young adults and these adults start to fall in love, which moves seamlessly into dynamic, crashing jazz as the love progresses to sex, to porn and finally to violence. The music is I'm sure what some pundits would describe as 'experimental' and certainly nothing about it suggests that what is unfolding on the screen is ordinary. Yet it also moves through just about every recognisable style, emphasising without making obtrusive the universal nature of the film. I had my reservations before seeing the film: in our image-saturated society we're told pictures have begun to lose their impact. It's easy to subscribe to the argument that images of starving children in Africa no longer prompt us to reach for our credit cards, and that we've become inured to war and destruction. Well, not if this film is anything to go by. The violence is raw and harsh, the childhood scenes warming without becoming twee. At times disturbing, and others touching or funny, this film is never complacent, and always moving. Everyone will have their standout moments - for me, it comes in the beautiful simplicity of the cycle, and how Pummell subtly returns to the beginning of birth from disease and death via dreams, taking the 'song' of the title in all its levels, and not just the physical. Forget Bodyworlds, Bodysong tells the real story of our structure, our mechanics, our spirit, our lives. Pummell has created a personal project (it was partly inspired by the birth of his son) but through the eclectic choice of images, none of which are original to this film, it is not his film in the traditional sense. More than any other I've seen (sorry, experienced) this film becomes personal to every person who watches it. The website demands a special mention in this cross-media project. Does it herald a new direction for filmmaking, exploiting the opportunities of the web? I'd love answer that one, but my browser won't let me be interactive, so in the spirit of the Bodysong project: go, log on and experience! Kerry McCleod |
