Close-Up is a column that spotlights films now playing on Mubi. Andrew Kötting's Edith Walks (2017) is playing June 29 - July 29, 2017 on Mubi in the United Kingdom.The faster we walk, the more ground we lose.—Iain Sinclair, Lights Out for the TerritoryIf there's a single date in English history that most of the country's population would know, it's 1066: the Battle of Hastings. They would hazily recall from wooden modular classrooms, stifling on a warm summer's afternoon, as they gazed out at heat rising from the tarmac playground, the tale of King Harold II, his cross-country march to war, and the Norman Conquest of the Anglo-Saxon realm. Perhaps the image of Harold as depicted on the Bayeux tapestry, an arrow protruding from his eye, would emerge from the palimpsest of history and linger on the fringes of their memory. The memories are much more immediate and painful for Edith Swan-Neck,...
- 6/27/2017
- MUBI
The actor takes a role also played by his father, Freddie, for an occasionally exasperating drama-documentary
In 1970, Freddie Jones played the part of John Clare (“a minor nature poet who went mad… ”) in a BBC Omnibus broadcast. Forty five years later, his son Toby revisits the role, retreading Clare’s 80-mile walk from an asylum near Epping Forest to his Northborough home in search of lost love Mary Joyce. As Toby wanders, Freddie reads from a collection of Clare’s autobiographical writings, providing a quasi-commentary for this strange odyssey.
Part drama, part documentary, part enthralled (sh)amble, By Our Selves finds director Andrew Kötting and writer/collaborator Iain Sinclair indulging their passion for Clare without necessarily engaging ours. En route, we encounter celebrated graphic novelist Alan Moore, who describes the inescapable Northampton as “a cultural black hole with an incredible mass”, hear from Professor Simon Kövesi (dressed as a prizefighter,...
In 1970, Freddie Jones played the part of John Clare (“a minor nature poet who went mad… ”) in a BBC Omnibus broadcast. Forty five years later, his son Toby revisits the role, retreading Clare’s 80-mile walk from an asylum near Epping Forest to his Northborough home in search of lost love Mary Joyce. As Toby wanders, Freddie reads from a collection of Clare’s autobiographical writings, providing a quasi-commentary for this strange odyssey.
Part drama, part documentary, part enthralled (sh)amble, By Our Selves finds director Andrew Kötting and writer/collaborator Iain Sinclair indulging their passion for Clare without necessarily engaging ours. En route, we encounter celebrated graphic novelist Alan Moore, who describes the inescapable Northampton as “a cultural black hole with an incredible mass”, hear from Professor Simon Kövesi (dressed as a prizefighter,...
- 10/4/2015
- by Mark Kermode, Observer film critic
- The Guardian - Film News
★★☆☆☆ "John Clare was a minor nature poet, who went mad," voices repeat as a challenging refrain throughout Andrew Kötting's By Our Selves (2015), a barmy reconstruction of a four-day walk/escapade that Clare took from the asylum near Epping Forest, where he was confined, heading for Helpston in Northamptonshire. Toby Jones has the thankless task of portraying the escapee, wandering about looking befuddled while a variety of voices recite poetry and letters, or mutter against a soundtrack that mixes ambient noise and electronic fluttering.
- 10/1/2015
- by CineVue UK
- CineVue
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