Requiem for a Village

The Film is a pastiche of Suffolk village life in the early 70's. This is not an easy film to watch or listen to, which I hope was the point. David Gladwell's most famous films have been as editor to Lindsay Anderson on 'If ' and 'O Lucky Man'. Perhaps he should of stuck to his calling.

My first viewing of this movie made me feel restless and his classic short films worked better for me. After many years, a second immediate viewing as I'm doing for many films amidst this pandemic. I returned and I felt terrible for missing the theme and not being able to capture the mood of the film in my first viewing. It is with much better results and the experience is more than poetic and a brilliant wrapping of genres accentuated by the melancholic score.

On the surface, it is a typical Gladwell film, as timeless, a place far away from all modern times, a story that his fans quite well know, and he can be classified as an expert in evoking that nostalgic feeling. But underneath there's TERROR and an interesting mix of folk horror. You'll find out when you watch the film, and the real excitement comes with the way it's shot and edited. It is nothing short of a miracle!

It is also a strongly nostalgic work, and this melancholy is born of conflict between past and the present, and the reality experienced by the character as he anticipates for the resurrection of old souls. The way in which, due to commercial and cultural developments, the traditions are disappearing to make way for a gang of speed enthusiasts - the present.

The film is a journey of an old man who maintains a graveyard in an old village church. He commutes with the past, with a rooster, tending the soil, and his heartbeat is no longer a companion to the modernity or to the people around him. He leaves no stones unturned to forget the past and reminds that a piece of nostalgia still exists in his imaginations. The past is evoked through fragments of stories as seen through the eyes of the old man and his reminiscences while on duty. The images overlap with some wonderful slow-motion edits, all to the soundtrack by David Fanshawe in which they fit perfectly, and to the rhythm of the narration of the old man.

It is also one of the very few films that has successfully combined genres and also has a folk-horror layer to it. In a key scene which feels like a genre hopping in a sudden turn of events when the dead resurrects. My god, its conceptual representation, in the overcoming of the absence, the one that this old man endures is shot so brilliantly. There are amazing shots that looks straight out of Audrius Stonys, Víctor Erice, Joris Ivens, Cecilia Mangini, Süha Arin, Dénes Nagy, Jonas Mekas, Shinsuke Ogawa, Jean-Claude Rousseau, Yoshishige Yoshida, Peter Nestler, Christopher Makoto Yogi, Eduardo Coutinho, Johan van der Keuken, Sumiko Haneda and Hilal Baydarov's universe. In few scenes, I could draw comparison to Lava (1989) by Tadeusz Konwicki and thought to myself if I can tweak few things and merge both the worlds, like a prequel of some sorts with a little of bit of adventure from Penda's Fen.

Overall a nostalgic, fantasy journey with little terror, nudity and a 16mm Masterpiece.

I really wanted to enjoy this film but found it hard going. It moves very slowly and the story if there is one hardly gets going. The film is really photographic essay and on that level it works. The photograph is very delicate, with very carefully crafted scenes. The sound is a bit muffed. Sound like a layer on top of the picture. The BFI is right to back this films but I don't think it would have wide appeal. The extras that come with the main film are also hard going. I don't think many people will enjoy this film and I am unlikely to watch it again. Maybe in a cinema on a large scene it would work much better. The print stock is very grainy, and in my own view it has very little charm.

I have in vane been trying to getting my hands on this for years, but it does not seem to be available anywhere. I remember with exquisite clarity the two times it was shown on Swedish TV in the late seventies, I was simply stunned. Twice. The simplistic and almost naive storytelling, advancing on several planes, is as ethereal as the conclusion is obvious and prosaic. Cast mainly with amateurs, this wonderful piece of a film has no equal - but an aura of Koyaanisqatsi.

The slow and almost dull ingress as (simplisticly) described in most sites on the net is (quote) "The churchyard keeper of a village church in the county of Suffolk, England, reviews the life and lifestyle of those villages as it evolved following the widespread introduction of machinery."

In my view this is an almost chauvinistic way of describing the alienation any aging human is increasingly feeling in a world spinning out of control and changing at an unsustainable rate. True, to fully appreciate the film you'd have to be a romantic - but in the end, this is what we will all become.

The key scene (in my view) is a duality, in a flashback showing a cherished memory of the keeper, cutting back to the present to show a scene with young people which in time may be a similarly cherished memory to them. But what happens next makes clear the abyss that must be bridged to bring understanding between generations, even when they are not that different from each others.

Addition: As some of you readers have already pointed out this film is now available on DVD/Bluray from British Film Institute, I bought my copy via British Amazon. Pictures as vivid as I remember, maybe the sound felt a bit muffled.

Watched this film on amazon prime, you can get a BFI subscription (£4) to add bfi films to your amazon prime account, I did this so I could watch Bait. Anyway what about this film, slow ? yes but that's good, music ? wonderful, cinematography ? beautiful, script ? minimal but that's good to. Made in 1975 but it's still relevant today with our ever changing world and more and more greenbelt being swallowed up by roads and houses. Loved how it told the life of the village through the memories (good and bad) of the old gentleman. I won't spoil it but some of the scenes are a little unsettling in the context of the film. But apart from that a lovely film well worth a watch.