Sobre o Tempo e a Cidade

Terence Davies's films always have wonderful openings. And his new film, "Of Time and the City", is no exception. The screen is dark, but we hear Liszt, and before we know it a cinema screen is rising before our eyes. As its orange curtains open, the colour fades, and we enter a black-and-white world of memory. We see Liverpool in the 19th century in all its imperial grandeur, as "Music for the Royal Fireworks" plays on the soundtrack. But that memory only drags us back to the present, to the contemporary remains of this grandeur, the majestic St. George's Hall, around which Davies's always fluid camera executes a series of breathtaking tracking shots. It is a truly magical opening, a reminder that, when it comes to creating transcendent cinema, Terence Davies is without peer.

The rest of the film could be seen as a kind of critique of these grandiose fantasies, because the film is not about the glory and wealth of Liverpool's architecture, but about its people. One of those people is Davies himself. But he is only one player in a cast of thousands: housewives, children, factory workers, happy holidaymakers, partying teenagers, and even the monarchy (the subject of a wonderfully vitriolic, and utterly deserved, attack at one point in the film). This is a film with real respect for the people of Liverpool, past and present – not only the workers of the 1950s, but also the young people of today. That is one reason why the film is so memorable, and so moving.

Throughout all of Davies's films we have the sense of a director doing something new with cinema: capturing the logic of memory; dramatising and allowing us to experience long-forgotten emotions; and creating a new cinematic style, at once formally rigorous and deeply humane. And like almost all of his films, "Of Time and the City" is both personal and universal. But even though it is composed mainly of archive footage of Liverpool, it would be a mistake to think of it as a documentary about the city, not least because doing so runs the risk of leading know-nothings to complain about the fact that it says nothing about the Toxteth Riots, or Liverpool football club, and so on. The film is personal, and therefore partial. But it is never solipsistic. It resonated with me deeply, even though I was not alive in the 1950s (and have never even been to Liverpool).

It is a film of many memorable moments: the destruction of terraces and the building of high rises, to the sound of "The Folks Who Live on the Hill"; footage of the forgotten generation of men who fought in the Korean War (including Davies's own brother); the extraordinary tracking shot across what seems like the whole sweep of Liverpool, from the shops to the docks. And on one level it is a simple, even straightforward film. But on another level it is very complex, full of fascinating and unexpected transitions and juxtapositions, and demands multiple viewings.

Quite simply, "Of Time and the City" is a masterpiece, which demonstrates – as if it needs demonstrating! – that Terence Davies is one of the greatest film-makers alive today. As you can tell, I loved it!

Terence Davies's documentary "Of Time and the City" should be considered as more of a cinematic poem. This can be a very irritating thing, and Davies does not make it all the way through the film without falling into self-indulgence. However, he does construct a quite beautiful piece of cinema.

This is flawless in areas. Davies's selection of music and images is impeccable, and his voice is a delight to listen to. As a result, a number of sequences are joyous to experience. The slice of the Korean War combined with "He ain't heavy, he's my brother" by The Hollies is my particular favourite. Davies is also, at times, devilishly funny. His description of the coronation of Elizabeth II as the beginning of the "Betty Windsor Show" raised a good laugh from the audience in my screening, and there are many other lines like it.

Davies is at times profound. His own personal writing about his awakening sexuality and the Roman Catholic Church is very interesting and honest. However, as he repeats the formula of poetic monologue leading on to music sequence time after time, he becomes less interesting and more self-indulgent.

Although this is a short film (clocking in at about an hour and a quarter), boredom could prove to be a problem. Nevertheless, this is an impressive and beautiful film. It isn't perfect, nor is it a masterpiece, but it is head and shoulders above many other films and an enjoyable experience.

We kind of expect our artists to be haunted by demons, it is in tacit understanding that in their art we'll find the template to overcome ours. That, in visiting the dark place which is shared among all of us, we can defer to them for guidance, for the light that dissolves the shadows.

Here we have the personal memoirs of one such artist. We see the demons, the hurt and anger generated by repressed homosexuality or a suffocating religion without answers. But they're up on the screen whole as dragged from the bitterest place, to be vexed than overcome. The manner is petulant, childish. Of course I agree with Davies for example about the obsolete, useless monarchy sucking the blood of the people, but how am I for the better by listening to his obvious, venomous attack upon it? I can get that in every forum online pending the royal wedding, from casual talk on the street.

And what am I to make of the boy's dismay at the silence of god? Which the boy now not-quite grown up, perceives as indictment and completely ignores what comfort he was offered at the time by prayer. Surely, life is more complex than this.

When by the end of this we get the realization of what matters, a life lived in the present without hope or love, it rings hollow because it hasn't been embodied in the work itself, which is riddled with an old man's angst.

And this is not all of it. The elegy to the city and the time that shuffled it is too tricly, oh-so-sombre, so filled with yearnings. What emotion is here is so obvious, that Malick appears subtle by comparison to it. So easily, quickly digestible that in trying to sate so much, to gorge in it, it doesn't sate at all.

What little of this works is the symphony of the city. The kind of film they were making in 1920's Berlin or Moscow to eulogize the booming architecture. With the twist that here, it is the uniquely British genius and propensity for creating a dismal urban landscape that appeals. The drab, grey routine. But I'd rather get this from The Singing Detective, which weaves it into a multifaceted story than a simple nostalgia. Or get the same experience Davies wants for his films from Zerkalo.

I suspect this will fare better for the people who share his vexations with religion and society, and who can relax in them. Me, I can't relax in anything without consideration for what the images and voices in it mean. With movies that transport, I'm always interested in the place they transport to. This is not one of those places.

A portrait of a time, a city and a man; the time being the past, the city, Liverpool and the man, of course, Terence Davies, the acclaimed British film-maker who hasn't made a film in several years because no-one would give him the money and who, now, has been funded to make this, a documentary portrait of his home town, a memoir that ultimately says more about Davies than it does about Liverpool. This is very much a personal project for Davies who not only directed the film but who also wrote the script and narrates it as well. Judiciously, he has used mostly old newsreel footage with some contemporary material to look back at his relationship with Liverpool and the nation as a whole as if to say, this is what shaped him, this is what made him the man and the artist he is. The result, like most of what Davies has done in the past, is a masterpiece; a deeply moving and often very funny study of a vanished age, quite unlike other 'documentaries'. Davies makes no concessions to 'facts', except as he sees them. This, he is telling us, is my view of Liverpool; this, he tells us, is the Liverpool where I grew up and this, he tells us, is the Liverpool he abandoned.

Anyone familiar with Davies' earlier work, particularly "Distant Voices, Still Lives" and "The Long Day Closes", will recognize this as a Davies film from the opening moments, the only difference being that the images on screen are 'real' and not fabricated in a studio. But then, of course, they are only 'real' in so much as Davies chooses to make them real. Like the greatest of documentary film-makers Davies has 'fabricated' reality to suit his own ends. (He is very particular in what he gives us; he has little time for The Beatles or for the Catholic Church while childhood is very much to the fore). And, of course, because the film has more to do with Davies himself than it does with Liverpool, his relationship with the city comes across as somewhat ambivalent. 'We love the things we hate and we hate the things we love' he quotes quite early on and while he presents us with a much idealized vision of Liverpool for much of the time, he never shies away from showing us the poverty and the darker face of the city. One popular song he doesn't use on the soundtrack, (left out, I have no doubt, as being too 'cheesy'), is 'The Way We Were', not the Barbra Striesand version but Gladys Knight's, the one that begins with 'Try to Remember'; "Everybody's talking' about the good old days ... we look back and we think the winters were warmer, the grass was greener, the skies were bluer and smiles were bright").

On the other hand, if the 'autobiographical' trilogy and "Distant Voices, Still Lives" are anything to go by, we know that Davies' own childhood was far from rose-tinted. (The later, "The Long Day Closes", may be seen as being much more about Davies himself and was certainly 'softer' and more homoeroticized that "Distant Voices ..."). Where "Of Time and the City" scores over the 'fiction' films is in Davies' ability to move beyond the family circle to tackle wider issues, taking swipes at both the monarchy and the Catholic Church. I kept thinking, here is a man who will never get a knighthood nor will he ever get to heaven, although I doubt if any loving God would deny entry to so creative a subject as Davies despite his professed disbelief.

"Of Time and the City" is a thing of beauty as much as a painting, icon or piece of classical music and I can think of no director in the history of the cinema who can marry music to imagery as beautifully or as profoundly as Davies, (and when are the CD soundtracks to his films going to be released). "Of Time and the City" is a work of art worthy of its creator and in a year when Liverpool has been designated European Capital of Culture, I can think of no more fitting a tribute.

I'm not from Liverpool, Scots actually, but have lived alongside it for forty years and it is one of the most fascinating cities architecturally, politically, socially and historically that one can come across. Even today its image and the mere mention of the name Liverpool can split the UK into two opposing factions. It has provided this country with some of the best (and some of the worst!) politicians, singers,poets, musicians, writers, statesmen, sportsmen and women, comedians, medicos, actors...you name it! It also had the blight of some of the worst housing, past and modern. It's had to put up with the blinkered meddling of inner-city planners since the fifties trying to rip the heart out of this jewel of a city. Fortunately some 'good men and true' had the vision and foresight from the 70's onwards to put the brakes on some of the excesses. But unforgivably, those inner-city planners took Scottie Road to the knackers yard instead of putting it out to stud.

Terence Davies casts a weary and at times tearful eye over the broad expanse of the city that shaped him. His homosexuality and the trauma that his deep catholic upbringing imposed on him made him a cynic. But that is not a bad thing. Cynicism is part of all of us and Davies imbibes his cynicism with mistrust and love and affection for a city that is in his marrow. Like the Scots, all true Liverpudlians, where e're they travel, are products of their upbringing and are never ashamed to admit it.

Watch this film with the sound off and it merely becomes a travelogue of the best and worst of this place. Watch and listen to Davies's commentary though, and the film takes on a vibrancy that fairly pulsates. Liverpool, through this film, becomes a city that breeds high blood pressure. For every beautiful building there is a slum, for every shopping mall there is a 'Bluecoat Chambers', for every wino begging on the subway there is a wisecracking Scouser trying to sell you something on the open-air markets, for every tragedy there is a joyous moment, for every factory that closes there is an entrepreneur starting up.

This polyglot of a city breathes..and it breathes life into its people. Walk down some of the old original cobbled alleys off Dale Street or Whitechapel (how did the planners miss them!!) and you can hear this city despairingly whisper into your ear.."Don't forget me!"

Davies captures the city and its contradictions and does it beautifully through his careful choice of film and especially through his words.

For him it's a love affair and like all such things there is hurt, despair, complacency, anger and moments of pure joy. He can hate his city with a vengeance but it flows through his veins. He knows it and he knows he'll never escape from it.

This is HIS Valentines card to HIS city and he has signed his name on it.

For the rest of us, this is Liverpool drawn on a wide canvas but in such sharp detail that it needs more than one viewing.

Highly recommended.