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Of Time and the City
Terence Davies eulogy to Liverpool is about more than the Beatles
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When a company called Digital Departures in England asked Liverpool filmmakers to enter a contest, the winners of which would get their film made, Digital Departures may have expected a lot of young film students and inexperienced video artists to enter. Yet along with those film students and inexperienced video artists was director and former actor Terence Davies. Davies, best known for his costume drama House of Mirth, hadn’t made a movie in seven years, and after a long selection process his film, Of Time and the City, was among three chosen for production.
Being known as a port city as much as the birthplace of the Fab Four, Liverpool has seen its fair share of changes in recent history, the basis for Of Time and the City, described by the filmmaker as both a love song and a eulogy. Mixing documentary footage with newly shot digital footage, Davies was not interested in a chronological history of the city as much as his own memories of Liverpool. The film’s website further describes it as “a narrative poem which, for the sake of genre, may be called a documentary.”
More reminiscent than historical, Davies gives the viewer his opinion on England’s monarchy and also adds a lot of sarcasm to the narration. Seeing the working-class life in an industrial slum juxtaposed with footage of the Queen’s coronation would seem to be where such an ironic take would stem from. Davies’ own voiceover is met with a classic pop soundtrack of the era.
After the rise of the Beatles the city went on to a recession in the 1970s, which helped fuel the fire of punk rock. In more recent years, Liverpool was named the European Capital of Culture.
Remembering the Liverpool of yesterday with black and white photos of a grimy working-class city, and acknowledging its now-changed landscape and atmosphere, Davies himself has explained he doesn’t know whom the audience is for his latest film. However, with Brooklyn’s ever-changing landscape of new condos and Manhattan’s Starbucks-on-every-corner feel, Of Time and the City’s New York run this month may give it the audience it deserves.