Courtesy of Deviant Art
From award-winning documentary-maker Sue Bourne, (My Street and Mum and Me) comes the Cutting Edge creation Love, Life, Death in a Day. With such an emotive title, expectations are high, perhaps too high.
Filmed last year in Bristol on the longest day of the year Bourne charts the story of an ordinary day and the extraordinary things that happen. Heartwarming as it may seem in the opening minutes, what ensues is little more than a lesson in the facts and figures of Bristol’s population. 35 births, 15 marriages and 36 funerals to be precise.
No doubt aiming at producing a gripping snapshot of everyday life, I found myself distinctly underwhelmed. Darting from one interviewee to another resulted in a hectic and rushed portrayal of what was meant to be a delicate look at life’s transformational moments in. Where Bourne had failed, I succeeded – I managed to provoke a moment of philosophising, would you believe? I found myself pondering on how I could be quite so bored by life? (Better than being bored to death, I suppose!) I soon came to realise that it was not so much the subject that bored me, rather Bourne’s lacklustre presentation of it.
On interviewing a 16-year-old on the cusp of becoming a father, the joyous moment is well and truly deflated by Bourne’s line of questioning, Do you have a job Anthony? she asks cynically. After a brief pause she announces glumly that Britain has the highest pregnancy rate in Europe. Enough said.
The film was not however entirely flawed. The filmmaker had clearly done her research and did well, I thought, to present such a varied and more importantly, perceptive cast. Not forgetting of course the highly unique concept, which was true to the Cutting Edge style I so avidly follow.
All in all a slightly disappointing hour, bittersweet even – just like life. Perhaps Bourne’s message didn’t totally pass me by after all!
