Poetic evocation

Deborah Ross

Wednesday, 27th May 2009

Sleep Furiously
U, Key Cities

Fireflies in the Garden
15, Key Cities

Sleep Furiously is a film (obviously) which, by rights, should make you Sleep Soundly (very) as there is no narrative, almost no dialogue to speak of, and no regular characters beyond the driver of a mobile library who at least takes hair-pin bends at 80mph with his eyes closed. Only joking; I don’t think he ever gets out of first gear. Maybe, on his birthday, he does shift up to second, but I don’t think we’ll ever know for sure.

Directed by Gideon Koppel, it’s about the tiny Welsh farming community of Trefeurig, which is where his parents settled as refugees from Nazi Germany, and where he grew up, and it’s basically a collage of shifting images capturing both people and the natural world: a pig giving birth to piglets; a field being ploughed; a Victoria sponge being baked; two columns of sheep moving across a rain-thrashed mountain; the driver of that mobile library pulling in for a cuppa from his Thermos, whoopee! It is dull, spectacularly dull but — and this is where it gets weird — it is also peculiarly compelling, affecting, atmospheric and sublime. It’s like a poem which, on the surface, may not look up to much but can still instantly evoke and, dear readers, let me tell you this: I was evoked. (I’m still evoked but, according to the experts, if I rest up and watch what I eat the symptoms may diminish in time.)

It opens with a town crier, in full regalia, and in full cry, walking up an empty, country road as his two little dogs follow. We never see this man again; his purpose being only to usher us into Trefeurig and that collage of images: a calf being born; Gideon’s mother having her stuffed owl adjusted (the taxidermist allowed too much branch); the driving rain; that Victoria sponge being baked. The woman baking the cake is faceless, by which I mean she has a face, probably, but it is never shown. We see just her doughy arms cracking the eggs, stirring in the flour, laying on the jam. I know, I know, watching paint dry and all that but she is so lovingly and admiringly filmed that the ordinary becomes beautiful.

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