Light Years

I was delighted to see Light Years last night.

It was a tour de force. I loved the ramming together of lyrically beautiful countryside against the roar of traffic and then long snaking vistas of brutal motor way traffic., embedded in the softness of the trees and the land It encompassed the schizophrenia of the land ( this our England ) the allegory of nature , and then the scars of traffic.

I loved the children who were unique , slightly lost in fantasy and anxiety while present in their disorganised every day .

The tale was so contemporary , the fractured family and the absent mother . Shocking then too when the mothers first impulse is to buy beer ,making it more sweet , that Rose continues to adhere to civilised behaviour. The child mothers the mother.

The enormity of children watching parents disintegrate , how pitiful it was and how courageous they all were.( the image of them watching their parents from the outside of the institution is a haunting one )

Not only that but some moments of charm , the deaf boy declaring his love for Rose, performing resuscitation on the white rat, accepting his geographical no go areas, all beautifully and quietly mapped out ,like life. Full of Injury , self doubt, charm , grace and stoicism .

What a wonderful tale and a foreign father , good at his job , absorbed ,at ease with bats and butterflies and his own house rotting , curling at the edges around his family .

Then there was the terrifying old Father Time figure , half naked ,fit , running , maddened , an old nightmare, a spectre of ageing

All these vignettes woven through with flights of birds in configurations that looked like symbols but rendered up no meaning, passages of countryside as pastoral and lovely as a Samuel Palmer and then the appalling ugliness of new builds, wind turbines, warehouses, tracks , noisy roads , all of this an elaborate embroidery , a meta language for a benign form of chaos which the protagonists ride through. bowed a little , but victorious as Victors are, with life still in them

It was an amazing film, thoughtfully made.

Light Years was a tour de force. I loved the ramming together of lyrically beautiful countryside against the roar of traffic and then long snaking vistas of brutal motor way traffic, embedded in the softness of the trees and the land.

It encompassed the schizophrenia of the land (this our England) the allegory of nature , and then the scars of traffic.

I loved the children who were unique, slightly lost in fantasy and anxiety while present in their disorganised every day.

The tale was so contemporary, the fractured family and the absent mother . Shocking then too when the mothers first impulse is to buy beer, making it more sweet, that Rose continues to adhere to civilised behavior.

The enormity of children watching parents disintegrate, how pitiful it was and how courageous they all were. (the image of them watching their parents from the outside of the institution is a haunting one)

Not only that but some moments of charm, the deaf boy declaring his love for Rose, performing resuscitation on the white rat, accepting his geographical no go areas, all beautifully and quietly mapped out, like life. Full of Injury, self doubt, charm, grace and stoicism.

What a wonderful tale and a foreign father, good at his job, absorbed, at ease with bats and butterflies and his own house rotting, curling at the edges around his family .

Then there was the terrifying old Father Time figure, half naked, fit, running, maddened, the comfort of old nightmares, terrifying .

All these vignettes woven through with flights of birds in configurations that looked like symbols but rendered up no meaning, passages of countryside as pastoral and lovely as a Samuel Palmer and then the appalling ugliness of new builds, wind turbines, warehouses, tracks, noisy roads, all of this an elaborate embroidery, a meta language for a benign form of chaos which the protagonists ride through. Bowed a little, but victorious as Victors are, with life still in them.

It was an amazing film made thoughtfully, sensibility shone through it. It is lovely. My congratulations to Third Films.

Beautiful sound and imagery from the start. But slow to get going.. Once the story of old man time, and light, and family progressed I was swept along with it. Complex themes win lots of hooks for the viewer to relate to. Love, imagination, pain, coping mechanisms, childhood, family, the progress of the world and of life. At times it was tense, funny and a bit weird. But over all it was a visual feast. I loved it. And would love to know where it was filmed. The cast were brilliant, not least 8-year-old Rose and her brother and sister who were the undoubted stars. Beth Orton was Whaley believable, but I wanted to know what was wrong with her.

There is no doubt that imagination protects from pain. And kids master in that. What they see beyond the sky is nothing less than "God's Hat", so there's no surprise when they believe that a Mum's or a Dad's life is forever. Like the one of a star which remains visible even if dead, being "light years" distant from us. A family can be a constellation of stars: they keep illuminating each other's life although they are no more. What if one of those glittering stars is a dying mother whose brain is collapsing but not her love for her 3 kids? The younger, Rose, is only 8 but she "knows" inside of herself that her mum is still there for her and will protect her as a "God's Hat". Talented British helmer Esther May Campbell wrote and directed her first long feature film like a wonder-dream, full of amazing audio/visual ideas that stir the audience and satisfy the critics. Nothing is there by chance, like a lyrical symphony sounding powerful and tender at the same time. Acclaimed at Venice Critic's Week 2015. Can't wait to watch her second feature film!

Following her BAFTA winning September, Esther May Campbell's moving and reflective first feature more than fulfils the promise of her garlanded short film. Joining a select but honourable lineage of British works that display an acute sense of the potencies of place, weather and the edge-lands (active agents in the telling rather than simple background), Light Years is at once a quietly insistent rites-of-passage piece, a subtle meditation on the implications and ripple effects of mental distress and a lyrical celebration of childhood resilience, imagination and common cause in the face of parental absence, whether locational or emotional.

With excellent use of painting, still photographs and a genuinely evocative sound-scape, it explores the handing on of experience and the fundamental unknowability at the heart of families and between generations, what might be thought of as the intimate otherness of people (sensitively caught in the ventriloquising witness of a silent night window familial encounter). This empathetic and engaged enquiry is embodied in and anchored by a striking trinity of entirely believable performances from its young cast. Light Years also skilfully deploys acclaimed alt.folk singer-songwriter Beth Orton in a bravely direct portrayal of maternal vulnerability and contradiction and Muhammet Uzuner (from Ceylan's Once Upon a Time in Anatolia) as the quietly collapsing father and husband.

Both a heightened realist study of regional lives and (be)longing and a dream of childhood epiphanies among the extraordinary-ordinary days of the suburban / rural borderlands, Light Years shines with an artist's pleasure in associative narrative and place-making, traits more familiar perhaps to audiences of the US independent cinema scene. A true-to-life tale of growing up, a fable of being lost and found, it's a journey into the woods - and out again - that deserves to be widely seen, and striking evidence of a welcome new ensemble of talent, full of conviction in the possibilities of their art.

By Gareth Evans Film Curator, Whitechapel Gallery, London Producer, Patience: After Sebald (Gee, 2011) Executive Producer, Unseen: The Lives of Looking (Goodwin, 2015) and By Our Selves (Kotting, 2015).