Artemis 81

"Artemis 81" is a made for TV movie that is three hours in length. This alone is not a problem, but the pacing is glacial and the movie is made with minimal incidental music...and it feels very slow and sterile. It's a shame, as the rather original plot about a battle between good and evil angels is intriguing.

So why did I watch this slow film? Well, it's one of the only movies I haven't seen with Daniel Day-Lewis...though his part is rather small. This is a bit of a suprise, as he's barely in the film at all...and would one day be a multi-Oscar winner.

While I noticed that almost all the reviewers liked this film, I cannot say the same. Its pacing is THAT slow...so slow that I just found myself about to yell at the TV...telling everything to just hurry up! Because of this and a decent story hidden by all this, I wouldn't mind watching a remake....a remake with life to it. Even with Sting playing one of the major characters, I just kept nodding off as I tried to finish the picture.

Almost forty years ago, I lost three hours of my life watching, and trying to make sense of, this film. I still don't really know what it is about even today, when helpful people have written explanations and put them on the Internet.

My main memory is of Gordon Sumner aka Sting, standing on an obviously freezing beach wearing a bathrobe, stating "I am not uncomfortable, I am not of this world", his nose pink with cold.

By all means watch this film, but please don't expect to make any sense of it.

This is the most excruciating, teeth-grindingly slow and incomprehensible piece of television I have ever sat through. It is almost unbelievable that this once received over three hours of Christmas prime-time terrestrial television programming. If anyone out there has seen this and can tell me anything about what was going on at virtually any moment of the proceedings after the author's van blows up, can they please e mail me and enlighten accordingly. I felt that this could have been at least an hour shorter but perhaps the extreme length was part of the makers intention. Certainly there are many striking images and memorable lines of dialogue but I found the pace to be impossible to bear at one sitting. Nevertheless, a very brave piece.

I just wrote 'I'm astonished it exists' while reviewing something else and it goes double for this. Others have already made better attempts to review it than I can, but I want to add it to my list for the sake of those who haven't heard of it.

I'm not even going to try to describe it, but here are some of the things I have exclaimed to people when failing to do so after watching it:

Sting is an Angel! Or perhaps some kind of alien! Hywel Bennett is in love with him! Or vice versa! Hywel Bennett descends into Hell or some kind of parallel world which is like Liverpool only they speak Estonian backwards and there's constant tannoy and posters warning you about crab monsters! There's a long-haired musical genius with this statue of a goddess who causes suicides all around him and is going to play a song that will end the world!

It's three hours long! They showed it without a break on the BBC at Christmas back when there were only three channels! And when TV was allowed to take risks.

It's not for everyone but for me the three hours passed in a flash. Some of it went over my head but at bottom it's a simple and powerful morality tale. Unlike some other reviewers I loved the poetic dialogue. It's worth watching for the bizarreness and unlikeliness and grandiose ambition alone - the joyous sense that you can do anything you damn well like in art and that some people have done - but it has far more going for it than that.

I recommend watching the writer David Rudkin's fantastic Penda's Fen first as an introduction to his world.

I'm not sure how to describe this bizarre, but beautiful movie.

First, it's long. Just one minute under three hours. And it's not exactly fast-paced either. If sci-fi for you means action, spaceships and interplanetary intrigue, give this one a miss. In fact, although the cover describes it as "The cult BBC Science Fiction film", I'd hesitate to call it science fiction; indeed, I'd hesitate to label it anything at all.

And it's definitely flawed. The dialogue is riddled with melodrama and pretentious poetry; the camera-work sophomoric, and the editing clumsy. And yet the effect shines through: the movie has an eerie, otherworldly quality, where trivial details (such as an old lady glaring at a noisy conversation in a library) seem to take on ominous significance.

And so, if you have the patience, you'll get sucked in to this movie. It's mysterious, and beautiful. But don't expect to come out satisfied. Although there is a plot, it is far from clear. The story moves from one surreal incident to another, each connected but seldom shedding any light on its predecessor; even at the end, when it appears that our protagonists have triumphed, it's far from clear what exactly they've triumphed over, and most loose ends are left firmly untied.

Hywel Bennett does a fine job as as the somewhat petulant author caught up in a situation that might have been co-written by Kafka and Philip K Dick. Dinah Stabb perhaps succumbs a little to her melodramatic script; Dan O'Herlihy brings an artistic gravitas to his role. A cameo from a very young Daniel Day-Lewis, and a supporting role by Sting, add a bit of celebrity interest.

Overall, Artemis '81 reminded me more than anything of Twin Peaks (which was made nearly a decade later, and, curiously, also featured Dan O'Herlihy) - the same sense of explanation hidden just around the corner, and another reality just half-glimpsed and poorly understood. I don't think everyone will enjoy this movie, but I certainly did.