Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas 22/8/2013)

Scott McGehee and David Siegel come to James having followed their exceptional thriller debut Suture (1993) with an exceptional remake of Max Ophüls's The Reckless Moment (1949) as The Deep End (2001) and a solid adaptation of Myla Goldberg's novel, Bee Season (2005). But, while the updating of the 1897 opus What Maisie Knew they have achieved with screenwriters Nancy Doyne and Carroll Cartwright is fresh and inventive in its narratorial choices, it loses the sonority of James's authorial voice and so dilutes his socio-satirical concerns that they seem more drolly melodramatic than provocatively trenchant.

Fiery rock musician Julianne Moore is divorced from laid-back English art dealer Steve Coogan. They live in very different apartments in New York and use six year-old daughter Onata Aprile as a pawn in their games of oneupmanship. Convinced she is a good mother, Moore sings the child a lullaby. But she is not fooled by such an ostentatious display of affection and prefers the company of her Glaswegian nanny, Joanna Vanderham. Yet, when Coogan intercepts the flowers that Moore sends her while she is staying with her father, Aprile retrieves them from the bin and is clearly touched by the gesture.

Despite adoring Vanderham, Aprile seems to take it in her stride when she marries Coogan after a whirlwind romance. Enraged by her ex-husband's treachery (and with an employee at that), Moore takes Aprile home and entrusts her to older nanny Paddy Croft. However, the girl is so frightened by this straight-laced termagant that Croft is fired, just as Moore decides to exact her revenge on Coogan by marrying handsome bartender Alexander Skarsgård. Much to Moore's frustration, Skarsgård takes a shine to Aprile and, with Moore and Coogan increasingly out of town pursuing their careers, she finds herself spending more time with new spouses.

When Vanderham refuses to accompany Coogan back to London, their marriage collapses and he returns home alone. But any sense of victory that Moore might feel is quickly tarnished, as she argues with Skarsgård over his doting on Aprile. One night, in a fit of pique, she takes the child to his bar and abandons her there, even though Skarsgård isn't on duty. Aprile spends the night with one of the cocktail waitresses and Vanderham comes to collect her the following morning. They set off by train for a house by the coast, where they are eventually joined by Skarsgård.

Once again, determined to demonstrate the depth of her maternal feeling, the self-pitying Moore makes a great show of caring for Aprile by diverting her tour bus so she can claim her. However, Aprile has no intention of going on the road or back to her parents and declares that she would rather stay with Skarsgård and Vanderham as they are nice to her and each other. Suitably chastened, but unwilling to put up much of a fight, Moore departs and, the following morning, the new family goes for an idyllic boat trip that avoids quashing any lingering misgivings that this ending may not be quite as happy as it appears.

Although they don't quite succeed in equating the Victorian aristocracy with modern celebrity arrivistism, Cartwright and Doyle have produced a smart script that affords Moore and Coogan plentiful opportunity to appal with their inadequate parenting. Indeed, they make such wonderfully self-obsessed grotesques that the common decency exhibited by Skarsgård and Vanderham seems dully over-idealised by comparison. But, as the splendidly composed Aprile seems to crave such selflessness and stability, her final choice is wholly understandable - although she reaches it in a much shorter time frame than her counterpart in the novel and without quite acquiring the depth of Maise Beale's knowledge and comprehension. However, McGehee and Siegel wring the full emotional value out of each little act of neglect or oversight committed by Coogan and Moore and it is these that ultimately seem more egregious than the endless bickering or shameless point scoring.

While the performances are admirably nuanced throughout (with even the saintly surrogates having their flaws), McGehee and Siegel overcook the film's visual aspects. Kelly McGehee's designs for Moore and Coogan's apartments is spot on and emphasises their use of Aprile as another chic accoutrement. But Giles Nuttgens's imagery seems calculatingly lush in a manner that misses the fact such impeccable décor is being viewed from Aprile's perspective. Nick Urata's score similarly borders on the hyperbolic and sometimes has the unfortunate effect of making Aprile seem too much like an angelic (and remarkably well-adjusted) victim rather than a shrewd observer of her circumstances who comes to realise how to exploit them to her advantage. Yet, while he might not recognise the milieu or the cosiness of the resolution, Henry James would see enough here to appreciate the wit and poignancy of this thoughtful, entirely relevant, but occasionally implausible adaptation.

Reflecting current events in cinematic terms is a risky business. In the early days, when films ran for just a few seconds, it was relatively easy to slip the odd reconstructed incident into actuality footage and pass it off as a genuine, as was the case with many claimed records of  combat from the 1900 American campaign in the Philippines to the Great War. More recently, Yousry Nasrallah debuted After the Battle at Cannes just four months after the revolution that ousted Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak. However, by the time Ibrahim El Batout completed Winter of Discontent, several documentaries about the Arab Spring had been released and events had moved on and damped the euphoria that liberty had initially brought. Indeed, as the current crisis between the military and the Muslim Brotherhood shows, the situation changes so rapidly that even 24-hour rolling outlets struggle to keep up with developments. Thus, while this intense flashbacking drama presents an intriguing insight into happenings before and after 25 January 2011, it feels like old news and the decision to rush it into the schedule at this juncture smacks slightly of opportunism.

As crowds gather in Tahrir Square, computer programmer Amr Wakid watches a video clip of a veteran of the Bosnian Civil War describing how he endured 15 days of torture. Concerned that events are about to reach a flashpoint, Wakid tells upstairs neighbour Ali Mohy El Din to buy lots of tinned provisions and cigarettes for himself and his diabetic mother. He returns to watch the local news channel, where ex-girlfriend Farah Youssef and co-anchor Tamer Diaey are being urged by channel boss Tarek Mandour to report the difficult events of Police Day from a pro-government perspective. Consequently, she calls a cop killed in the square a martyr and fawningly interviews uniformed guests who vow to round up the troublemakers seeking to destabilise the nation.

Meanwhile, across Cairo, a meeting of high-level officials discusses how to control the masses after Friday prayers on 28 January and secret police chief Salah al-Hanafy suggests a communications black out to prevent the rabble from organising effectively. A flashback returns to 18 January, as Wakid is being held in a CCTV-monitored cell and is ordered not to cross a white powder line on the floor. Al-Hanafy in interrogating a cleric by forcing him to drink water and tea until he wets himself and, at the height of his humiliation, Al-Hanaf orders him to stop mentioning the invasion of Gaza in his sermons.

Youssef returns home to find her parents watching coverage of the uprising on the BBC. They ask why her station is not telling the truth and Al-Hanaf's wife (Fatma) asks the same question over breakfast. By 28 January, Youssef is becoming increasingly disillusioned with the way Mandour is doctoring material for broadcast. She storms out of the studio after complaining that a phone call from Tahrir Square declaring that the protesters are unpatriotic has been faked because there is no background noise of the chaos. As she drives away, her car is flagged down by activists who beg her to take an injured man to the Egyptian Cultural Centre. But, as she waits outside, she is recognised and abused for being a Mubarak lackey. The president address the country on television that night and Youssef goes to the roof of her building to film the scene below so that a real picture of what is occurring on the capital's streets can reach fellow citizens and onlookers across the world.

The scene shifts to Al-Hanaf's office, as he promises to release Wakid if he stops supporting the Gaza campaign. He explains that Israel is not Egypt's enemy and that it betrays his ignorance that he should fall for Islamist propaganda. Slyly, he also suggests that Youssef earned her promotion by kowtowing to the authorities (and insinuates she even slept with him). Wakid returns home to learn that his mother has died while he has been away and he is consoled by El Din and older female neighbour Amani Khalil. Left alone, he weeps in his darkened room and, when Youssef comes to offer her condolences, he spurns her efforts to touch him.

Hurt by her reception at the cultural centre, Youssef records a message apologising for her cowardice and calls on all Egyptians to rise up and fight for freedom. She asks Wakid to use his satellite phone to upload the clip to the Internet and he agrees, as, even though his phone is monitored by the police, he is confident that the masses will have triumphed by the time they connect him with such an inflammatory diatribe. However, shortly after he receives a visit from Khalil's son (Tarek Abdel Hamid) to thank him for his kindness towards his mother, Wakid is arrested with such brutal force that an appalled Youssef is films the damage caused to the apartment with her camcorder. Wakid is taken to an abandoned school and the camera alights on his fellow prisoners as they are questioned: a man who was detained while collecting a pizza, a grandfather who had decided to join in because it was the will of the entire nation, and a smart alec punk whose backchat provokes a slap across the face.

While out with her children, Fatma has her car stopped by demonstrators. They let her pass without any harassment, but Al-Hanaf is sufficiently concerned to send his family to a safe villa with their maid until the tumult dies down. On 1 February, Mubarak took to the airwaves late in the evening to announce that he would not stand in the next general election. As he speaks, Wakid is dropped blindfolded in the middle of nowhere. He is amused, on arriving home, to see Hamid trying to repair the damage in his flat with a blow torch. But Youssef has nothing to smile about, as she and cameraman Sherif Farahat have their car stopped and searched. Wakid himself becomes embroiled in a vigilante beating in his neighbourhood and he is not proud at having allowed himself to lose control.

Fast-forwarding to 11 February, Mubarak announces his resignation and Wakid and Youssef are reunited among the rejoicing crowds on Tahrir Square. Al-Hanaf, however, has fled Cairo to join his family on the coast and one is left to suspect that the new regime will be requiring his specialist services in the none-too-distant future. As the picture closes (on a scene made all the more distressingly bittersweet by hindsight), captions reveal that 2286 people were to lose their lives over the next 12 months, while 371 lost their eyes and a further 8469 were wounded. Of the women detained by the army, 27 were tested for their virginity and 12,000 Egyptians were imprisoned after military trials.

Given the ongoing slaughter, these statistics seem less shocking than they should be. But, while it is tempting to be wise after the event in assessing El Batout's fourth feature, it has to be taken in its correct context. Moreover, it has to be seen as a film more for domestic than international consumption, as, even though scenes are meticulously dated throughout, the significance of their backdrop will not always be apparent to outsiders. Similarly, non-Egyptians will not know that Wakid's character is named after Nagi Ismail, a young film-maker who was arrested shortly after the Tahrir protest, or that the testimony he watches on YouTube in the opening scene comes from the director's own brother. Indeed, El Batout and editor Hisham Saqr don't always make it clear that the incidents depicted from Wakid's detention occurred in 2009. Nevertheless, the sense still emerges of a people slowly finding the courage and the wherewithal to overthrow oppression and El Batout and fellow scenarists Ahmed Amer, Yasser Naeim and Habi Seoud ably (if a touch melodramatically) succeed in showing how the military and media conspired with the state to enforce the authoritarian status quo. 

Often operating within Mostafa Imam's cramped sets, cinematographer Victor Credi equates austerity with subjection. But, while it generates a disconcerting mood of uncertainty, the focus on Wakid's incarceration and isolation prevents El Batout from revealing the scale and vibrancy of the Tahrir protests. Thus, what comes across is the aspirational spirit rather than the explicit fact of insurrection. This may be down to budgetary restraint, but surely more archival or guerilla footage of the throng could have been inserted to reinforce the revolutionary mood. Similarly, El Batout might have emphasised more forcibly the potential for the people's protest to be hijacked by forces seeking to impose a different kind of repression in order to impose its agenda. But the restraint of his brooding drama is admirable and one hopes he will return to the characters to chronicle their subsequent fates. But this remains a story whose ultimate ending is still far from certain.

Actual events also inspired Renny Harlin's The Dyatlov Pass Incident. In February 1959, a group of nine ski hikers went missing on Kholat Syakhl in the Ural Mountains and their half-dressed corpses were later discovered close to their camp. Although each showed signs of extreme tanning and one registered large amounts of radiation, there were no obvious external wounds on the victims and even those with a severed tongue and crushed skulls and ribs showed no appreciable sign of bruising. The most commonly accepted explanation is hypothermic dementia. But conspiracy theories quickly began to abound that the expedition had been abducted by aliens or had been subjected to hideous military experiments. Some even suggested that they had been attacked by a yeti.

However, screenwriter Vikram Weet has his own ideas and they tumble out in a striking, if not always convincing conclusion to this suspenseful investigation. The only trouble is, Harlin adopts the fatally flawed `found footage' approach to the journey and this serves only to exacerbate the sketchiness of the characterisation and the sheer banality of much of the dialogue. Consequently, it's hard to recognise the director of Die Hard 2 (1990), Cliffhanger (1993) and The Long Kiss Goodnight (1996) in this slick, but derivative chiller.

Fascinated by the events in the so-called `Devil's Pass' after hearing about them from tutor Jane Perry, five Oregan college students head into the unknown to seek for clues that the Soviet authorities might have overlooked or covered up. Leading the expedition are psychology major Holly Goss and film wannabe Matt Stokoe, while sound engineer Gemma Atkinson and climbing specialists Ryan Hawley and Luke Albright provide the back-up. They plan to make a documentary tracing the steps of the Dyatlov Nine. But, from the outset, Harlin makes it clear that, unlike their Russian counterparts (whose frozen figures were shown at the start of the picture), the American quartet disappear altogether and, as a Russian news crew explains, the only intimation of their fate is contained on the digital camera cards that they have left behind.

The picture suddenly cuts to Goss and Stokoe clinging to each other in green night-sight vision before a caption takes us back a month, as the party takes the train across Russia. They try to interview Boris Stepanov, who was the tenth member of the Dyatlov group, but had to return to base after falling sick on the first day. However, they are prevented from seeing him by hospital orderlies and wonder why he was holding up a cardboard sign to them from his upper-storey window. Just as spookily, they are served the very flaming spirit the doomed men drank in a bar where Nikolay Butenin agrees to be their guide. He also translates Stepanov's warning to stay away, while his aunt, Nelly Nielsen, reveals how she joined her brother in the 1959 search party and knows for a fact that they found 11 cadavers not nine.

As the Americans speculate about this discovery, they trek into the snow and make camp for the night. As Goss raves about the Northern Lights, Stokoe reveals that strange lights were noted in the sky back in February 1959 and they are spooked next morning to find two different sets of footprints in the snow outside their tents. Moving on, they find more prints and a booming sound seems to come from nowhere. When they find a Stevenson screen in the middle of the pass, Goss is shocked to find a tongue left inside. Stokoe says this is becoming eerily like his first high-school acid trip and Goss insists that they plough on because she had a childhood dream about opening a door on darkness (her last utterance on the tape shown earlier) and that getting to the bottom of this mystery is her destiny.

Stokoe jokes that Goss is like Velma from the Scooby-Doo cartoons and, when they reach the precise spot where the ski hikers perished, she sprays body outlines in the snow in red paint and describes their fate before mounted photographs of each victim. Hawley and Albright are concerned, however, that they have reached their destination so far ahead of schedule and are disturbed by the fact that their compasses and guidance systems have packed in. But it is too late to strike camp and head back, so they reluctantly agree to hunker down for the night.

Goss and Stokoe conduct a Geiger counter test on their surroundings and find the door to a bunker that locks from the outside. Stokoe is against opening it, as he reasons that it was designed to keep something in rather than intruders out. But, when their tents are destroyed in an avalanche that sweeps Atkinson away and breaks Hawley's leg and they are shot at by the two men they had hoped were coming in answer to their flair, Goss, Stokoe and the wounded Albright have no option but to shelter inside. They find a power switch and follow a corridor to a caged core, in which Stokoe finds evidence linking the place to USS Eldridge, the American destroyer escort involved in the 1943 Philadelphia Experiments in teleportation. Leaving the ailing Albright behind, Goss and Stokoe look for a way out. However, they walk straight into a trap whose only exit has to be seen to be believed. 

Some undistinguished shakicam photography, flash editing and CGI work come close to ruining the finale of this serviceable melding of an unexplained tragedy and an unsubstantiated rumour. As is always the case with found footage flicks, someone has gone to a lot of trouble to cross-cut the imagery into a logical narrative, complete with flashbacks, inserts and inspired shifts in perspective. They also seem to have a happy knack of selecting the optimum shot whenever two cameras happen to be rolling. But, all sneering at an increasingly risible sub-genre aside, this may not be on a par with Matt Reeves's Cloverfield (2008), but it is better than the majority of pictures in the same vein. Holly Goss makes a strong heroine, who would still stand out even if the other characters had more to do than tag along and express misgivings. But, as solid as Denis Alarkon-Ramires's location camerawork and Fyodor Savelyev's bunker décor might be, things go to pot in the last reel, with Steve Mirkovich's editing struggling valiantly to hide the multitude of sins in Ilya Churinov's mediocre effects.

The landscape plays an equally crucial part in Robert Pacitti's On Landguard Point, a debut feature that was produced as part of the Cultural Olympiad accompanying London 2012. Complete with a score by Michael Nyman, this is an ambitious meditation that owes sizeable debts to the works of Peter Greenaway, Patrick Keiller and Andrew Kötting. But, in seeking to persuade audiences to take a fresh perspective on eastern England through poetry, prose, song and tableau, Pacitti demonstrates a filmic inexperience that often sees his set-pieces drift into self-indulgence and obscurity.

Inspired by `punk, activism, fine art and clubland', the Pacitti Company has been producing live solo and group performance items for theatre, gallery and site specific spaces across the world since 1990. It clearly has cogent theories on the past and the present and how they constantly interact and this occasionally results in some striking images and symbols that adroitly illuminate the discussion of such concepts as home, identity, trade, migration, defence and descent. But the sheer volume of idiosyncratic ideas eventually overwhelms even the most charitable observer.

While it features contributions by such artists as Kira O'Reilly, Julia Bardsley, Rajni Shah, Harminder Judge, Dominic Johnson, Carla Esperanza Tommasini and Giovanna Maria Casetta, this was very much a people's project, with 20,000 participating from Cambridgeshire, Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire, Essex, Suffolk and Norfolk. In addition to capturing outdoor events and activities from the summer of 2011 and spring of 2012, Pacitti also invited submissions to what he called the People's Peculiar in order to create a folk encyclopedia of shared knowledge and experiences. Two hundred and five of these pitches were turned into symbols whose obvious and covert appearance will doubtless mean more to residents of the six counties than outsiders. Six identical sets of handmade silver charms relating to each of these 205 stories were created and the pieces from one set were buried in 200 archaeological digs that took place in gardens across the region.

This background information helps make sense of the various chapters that form this unique patchwork. But not even the combination of Pacitti's earnest narration and the legends gliding across a series of red LED text boxes will be enough to unlock the many mysteries contained within the visuals. 

The naked figure of Rajni Shah emerging from the sea opens Chapter 1: The Call. She dresses in a blue uniform and is handed a trombone, which she proceeds to play in a brass band that strikes up one of the many trademark Michael Nyman pieces that will accompany and drive the action. Chapter 2: The Fort, the Port & The Point does more to set the scene, as Robert Pacitti's deliberately enunciated narration informs us that Landguard Point was once an island, but now abuts the port of Felixstowe. It was the site of the last successful invasion of Britain (by the Dutch in 1667) and has long been guarded by a fort. To emphasise this point, Edward Wakefield appears in a period uniform with a scarf wrapped around his face to brandish a rifle and fire it into the air.

Kira O'Reilly appears holding a large circular mirror that reflects her environs and, as Nyman's score thrums in the background, Pacitti explains how fortunate he feels to find bric-a-brac when he digs his garden and the camera alights on some of the items on a shelf above a desk, where a child colours the outline of a dog. A black Labrador bounds towards the fort, inside which sits the heavily tattooed Dominic Johnson, who is bleeding from a wound in his head. Henry Purcell's `Under This Stone Lies Gabriel John'  is sung over the sight of LED screens standing on frames in shallow tidal water flashing messages about maps and the meaning of the past, as a pair of horse riders pass sedately behind them.

It would be very easy to mock such borderline parodic images. Indeed, there is almost something Pythonesque about the gravitas and intensity of a clipped military accent proclaiming radio defiance in the face of the enemy, while Dicky Eton stands on a pillar holding a flaming flair and a Sheila Ghelani walks in a circle seemingly filming the ground beneath her. They raise the first of a series of black flags on a creaking pole  Wind turbines grind on a grey horizon as storm clouds circle overhead and this evocative image is complemented by a shot of the sea lapping over a rickety groyne. A JCB rumbles into sight, as Pacetti recites a poem about the winds blowing on Landguard Point like the people they have guided throughout history to its shore.

A rear close-up of someone cutting around a map of the East Anglian coast dissolves into a long shot of dockside cranes before a leisurely pan picks out some pillboxes on the headland. An abrupt cut takes us to a pier, where members of the Clacton Musical Theatre Society gad about as burlesque and circus folk, while a brass band in red uniforms sit under red parasols to play another snatch of incessant Nyman score. A cut presents a medium distance view of a funfair against a lowering sky before the focus switches back to the LED boxes urging readers to spend time exploring the landscapes maps lay out for them.

It is difficult to know whether these representations of seaside life are supposed to convey anything beyond a sense of celebration. But Pacitti is already confiding, at the start of Chapter 3: An Edible Compass, how he recalls the past in his sleep and often feels the presence of ghosts. A field is dotted with scarecrows in historical costumes and someone needlepoints the word `stealth', as Pacitti reminds us of his happy knack of unearthing relics from the past and how glad he is to live in his house, in this land, on this island. The scene switches to a patch of grass, as a Eton whitewashes a target of concentric circles and Ghelani mounts a metal star beaten by a blacksmith on a pole. Figures in Hazmat suits walk Suffolk Punch horses around the outside of the circle, while cartographers work at a table under an awning. Scouts rush into the circles and start erecting pup tents, as Eton strikes an aesthetic pose beside them and the scene fades to black. 

Continuing the country fete theme, Richard Manwaring introduces the entrants in a competition to bake a cake in the shape of a local landmark. As knives are brought in for them to be sliced, Pacitti cuts to the LED signs averring that maps detail the past for those in the present, as the soundtrack is taken over by dozens of thrashing electric guitars. Pacitti lists the names of local women who were executed for witchcraft as the musicians take over the circle, which Eton paces with some purpose before a cut takes him to the fort. Here, Pacitti recalls the bizarre life of Philip Thicknesse, a governor of the fort in the mid-18th century, whose upstanding public image masked domestic tyranny. In his will, he stipulated that his severed hand should be delivered to one of his two rejected sons as a remembrance of their filial inadequacy.

The Labrador pads along another prom, where another black flag is raised by Eton and Ghelani. The blue band returns to play, but they are drowned out by a military band marching past. As they take up station in the background, a troupe of adolescent pom-pom dancers occupies the foreground, along with two men leading some donkeys and the Lord Mayor of Great Yarmouth in full regalia. A female photographer records the scene and her black caped covering contrasts with the bared red-crossed breasts of Julia Bardsley, as she stands in a scarlet dress on the steps of the fort with a falcon on her wrist. A long red fuse slinks away from her other hand and tops a groyne on the beach before igniting a display that resembles the London Underground logo at a slight angle. Chapter 4: Live Trade continues with a Busby Berkeleyesque top shot into a pool full of synchronised swimmers, who perform a routine to a kitschy pop song.

A cut reveals the Labrador emerging from the sea before Pacitti rather spuriously compares the produce arriving in containers at Felixstowe docks to the contents of a giant shopping bag. He monotonously lists possible items before cutting to a tracking shot past a long table covered with flags whose origins are discussed by the diners. Suddenly, protesters carrying placards bearing the word `No' burst into the frame and start smashing the tents in the horse circle. Another group launch into each other for a flour bomb fight. At this point, as snails are shown crawling over the hands of an artist, Pacitti cuts to Carla Esperanza Tommasini dressed as a 16th-century lady-in-waiting. A cabal of men stripped to the waist and wearing black KKK-style hoods carry a casket on a bier across desolate terrain, in what feels like a surreal parody of a Bergman dream sequence. In a series of cuts, Tommassini opens her mouth and a hand removes one of the silver symbols mentioned above and they are placed on a black velvet cushion. The significance of this sequence eludes this critic, as does the shot of a Hazmat figure cleaning a red-lit orchestra stage before some pigeons are released from baskets on a beach and the now rather irksome LED signs broadcast curious and rather pompous combinations of words like `battle and heart', `sky and time' and `earthwork and rampart and hole'.

Against a dark blue dusk sky, Chapter 5: Dig begins with another bare-breasted woman. This one is brandishing a torch and wearing a horned head-dress, as others with their heads wrapped in cloth whirl like Dervishes around her to the sound of dulcimers. A pan shot moves away past another flagpole to the Sizewell nuclear station in the distance. Pacitti rather drones about landscapes waiting to be filled with people over a shot of Eton and Ghelani raising another flag behind some fishermen hauling a silver cloth out of the sea. However, this gives way to the most poignant scene in the entire film, as a choir of fisherman's wives sing a lament for the men lost at sea and one of their number solemnly rings a bell at the tideline to summon both the boats and the spirits back to shore.

A fisherman wades past the LED signs, whose latest ramblings include the phrase `of spittings and scarecrows and flight', which clearly means something to someone. As does the yellow balloon tethered to a fence. Cockerels crow, as the camera surveys a row of allotments and the breeze rustles plants and crops alike. Eton watches sandy soil being sifted and, as Pacitti returns to the treasures gleaned from his garden, a small group gaze into a hole they have excavated. But Eton is soon busy responding to a whistle blown by Ghelani and he emerges from one of four black beach huts to raise a flag with a No.6 on it. This is lowered and another bearing a key replaces it. The bearers retreat to their huts until another blast brings them back to hoist a flag with a compass at its centre. Inevitably, Chapter 6: Sow, contains some LED wisdom, this time about people remaining on the land until they become dust. But this closing passage is about burial, as a woman walking along a country path hands a silver sow to a man who puts it into a hole and the camera focuses on earth piling up as it is filled in, while Pacitti insists that he is on the edge of a daydream and wants to take us for a walk to the places that have been seen in his film, whether we are geographers, ethnographers, daydreamers or friends. He declares that animals will watch as we walk and raise flags and wear sashes and gloves and remember those who have gone before us on this island home. But, rather than departing on a note of profundity, this closing litany rather resembles the spadefuls of soil being tossed casually on top of one another to the sound of crashing waves and Nyman's plangent strings.

There's no doubting the sincerity of this enterprise or its desire to capture a moment in time when the people of the east rallied together. In this regard, it is a charming and worthwhile record that participants can point to with pride and local journalists can praise with insider fulsomeness. The cinematography of Becky Edmunds and Lucy Cash is often ravishing, while the sound designed and recorded by Dario Swade and Peter Wright provides a deft counterpoint to Michael Nyman's inconsistent, but occasionally inspired and never ignorable score. Hoping Chen's editing is also solid enough, although it is often asked to do the impossible in making audiovisual or thematic connections between items that often seem bundled together rather than meticulously assembled. Given the scope of the material, Robert Pacitti's overall conceit is admirable. But, every now and then, the ideas and/or the imagery raise unintentional smiles and there is never an escape from suffocating sense of someone striving and failing heroically to create art of great significance.