Patience (After Sebald)

A richly textured essay film on landscape, art, history, life and loss, Patience (After Sebald) offers a unique exploration of the work and influence of internationally acclaimed writer W.G. Sebald (1944 - 2001). With contributions from major writers, artists and filmmakers, including Adam Philips, Robert Macfarlane, Rick Moody and Tacita Dean, the film is structured around a walk through coastal East Anglia, the same path followed by Sebald in his ground-breaking book, "The Rings of Saturn." Directed by the Grierson Award winning director of Joy Division, Patience is the first film on this important and vital writer, and marks ten years since his untimely death

Set mostly around East Anglia - where Sebald spent much of his professional working life - PATIENCE looks at his life and work, as well as considering his idiosyncratic style of writing: allusive, metaphoric, difficult yet rewarding. Grant Gee's film is not without its merits; its purpose is obvious, and the director has obviously done his research, with the help of literary luminaries such as Sir Andrew Motion, and sonorous narration by Jonathan Pryce. The only snag is that visually speaking the film is not particularly interesting. Shot in black and white with color interludes, the shot-composition tends towards the repetitive, while the interventions from the experts on Sebald's work tend to go on too long. We do have the pleasure of listening to Sebald himself - a talented writer cut down too early in his late-flowering career - but one still gets the feeling that PATIENCE could have been more crisply told if the running-time had been reduced. A sixty-minute documentary has been stretched out into 96 minutes.