Parky at the Pictures (DVD 11/10/2018)

Opening with a montage showing how Jarecki and his crew tricked out the Rolls with camera to turn it into a luxurious moving studio, the documentary kicks off with political analyst James Carville comparing the effect Elvis had on American to being thumped by Mike Tyson. The boxer's blows were so powerful that an opponent's sense of taste was irrevocably altered and Carville suggests that the US tasted differently after Elvis emerged in the mid-1950s. 

We hear Emi Sunshine and The Rain singing in the back of the Rolls as it passes through Knoxville, Tennessee en route to Tupelo, Mississippi, where Terri Davidson from the museum at Elvis's birthplace explains how much the town treasures its association with the King of Rock'n'Roll. Yet, despite having a college education, she barely earns a living wage. An Elvis impersonator whose relatives sharecropped with Presley's family similarly struggles to get by and we hear audio interviews in which Elvis states that happiness is more important than material wealth. Cultural critic Greil Marcus (who wrote the book, Dead Elvis) suggests that Presley made people believe in the constitutional right to the `pursuit of happiness' and historian Steve Fraser recalls how shocking that document felt in 1776, when the world was dominated by monarchs and aristocrats and most people had no concept of anything other than the daily grind. 

Sitting in a roadside diner, Carville claims that the American Dream that Franklin Delano Roosevelt promised around the time Elvis was born on 8 January 1935 no longer exists because it's no longer possible for people to work in the same job for 30 years and send their kids to college. Presley biographer Peter Guralnick reveals that Elvis and his mother Gladys had to move into a shack in a predominantly black neighbourhood after father Vernon was jailed for passing a bad cheque. Jarecki asks the locals if they know where the house is and the African-Americans seem unsure, while the mother and daughter in residence concur that the American Dream has gone sour and that nobody in Tupelo cares about those on the margins. 

Jarecki drives to Parchman, Mississippi, where Vernon Presley served his time and meets bluesman Leo `Bud' Welch. He plays in the back of the car and suggests that the blues is the music of a good man feeling bad. His father was also an inmate at Parchman and he recalls that it was tantamount to being a plantation. Unsurprisingly, Elvis needed to be somewhere more vibrant to pursue his ambitions and he moved to Memphis, Tennessee, which Chuck D from Public Enemy describes as a confluence of social, economic and cultural influences in the 1950s. Mayor AC Wharton claims it was the city of three kings with Elvis being joined by BB King and Martin Luther King and gospel singer Erlis Taylor sings in the back of the Rolls outside the Lorraine Hotel, where he was murdered in April 1968. 

Taylor knew Presley at the church where preacher William Herbert Brewster placed a good deal of emphasis on music as a form of worship. She claims Elvis couldn't sing before he started listening to church music and Justin Merrick, the choir master at the Stax Music Academy in Memphis, explains how gospel and blues were two sides of the same musical coin that produced soul. Some of his students sing `Chain of Fools' in the back of the Rolls, as Merrick opines that Elvis came to South Memphis to acquire experiences that he couldn't get in his own community. 

As we meet  school pals George Klein and Jerry Schilling, Van Jones, the president of Rebuild the Dream, claims that Elvis was born into an American Nightmare. We hear Billie Holliday singing `Strange Fruit', as we see a photograph of a lynching and a clip of Klansman Asa Carter espousing his pernicious views. Schilling agrees with Jones that Memphis in the early 50s was so strictly segregated that it felt like one was living in an apartheid state. But, while Schilling called the blues forbidden music, Jones calls it the cry of pain and finds it disconcerting that those who inflicted the misery were the ones to benefit from the music. Chuck D similarly castigates a society that could extol films like Melville Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack's King Kong (1933) without admitting that they were white supremacist allegories. 

Without a hint of irony, Guralnick explains how Sun Records owner Sam Phillips hoped that rock`n'roll would help break down the racial barriers in the United States. But, while he recorded the likes of Howlin' Wolf and BB King, he became convinced he needed a white artist to make the crossover into the mainstream. Actor Ethan Hawke travels to Memphis to meet Jerry Phillips, who recalls how his father discovered Elvis, who was working as an electrician before he came into the studio for a session that culminated in the recording of Arthur `Big Boy' Crudup's song, `That's All Right'. Hawke considers how different Presley sounded to other Frank Sinatra wannabes and guitarist Scotty Moore praises his unique talent. 

However, Jones and Chuck D have problems with the notion that Elvis was the King of Rock`n'Roll and aver that he was guilty of cultural appropriation and allowed himself to become the poster boy of White America in the same way that John Wayne had been. As we see Big Mama Thornton singing `Hound Dog', David Simon (the creator of The Wire) says that cultural appropriation is inevitable in a melting pot society like America and notes that the song was written by two Jewish tunesmiths, Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller and that Elvis was also influenced by country and bluegrass stars like Hank Snow and Bill Monroe, as well as easy listening crooners like Dean Martin. Chuck D has no problem with Elvis singing black music, just as he is cool with African-Americans playing classical piano pieces written by Germans. But Jones (who, like Chuck D, doesn't ride in the Rolls) is riled that Jarecki seems bent on trying to rescue Elvis from a charge of making a fortune from black music and doing nothing to repay his debt. 

As the scene shifts to Memphis, music executive Mark Wright joins the chorus of disapproval against Colonel Tom Parker, the carnival showman who began life in Holland as Andreas van Kuijk and who coaxed Elvis into accepting a Faustian bargain to make him the biggest star in the world. Although he liked to present himself as a small-town momma's boy, Elvis was fiercely ambitious and didn't enter into this deal with his eyes closed. As audio clips capture Elvis distancing himself from charges that rock fuels juvenile delinquency, John Hiatt gets emotional in the back of the Rolls, as he drives to the RCA Studios, where Elvis found himself after Parker had secured him the most lucrative recording contract in musical history. They meet up with singer Radney Foster, who suggests that this period saw Elvis lose the `roll' and start churning out slick `rock'. 

Emmylou Harris and Mary Gauthier have sympathy with him because he was a young man venturing into unknown territory and he trusted people who saw him as a money-making machine. Wright opines that Elvis was the first major crossover artist, but this ignores Bing Crosby and Sinatra, who also did radio, television, discs and movies. However, Elvis was also at the centre of a merchandising maelstrom and Wright suggests he was shoved down the throat of the American public, who swallowed him whole because they had never seen anyone as handsome and daringly charismatic. 

At this juncture, the silver Rolls develops engine failure and it has to be pushed on to a trailer for the journey north, during which Kate and Maggie sing in the backseat on Route 19 in West Virginina. It's also at this point that Jarecki asks road crew chief Wayne Gerster where he thinks the film is heading and he surmises that the director is trying to draw parallels between Elvis's decline and that of the United States. But he feels the country is merely stagnating and laments that the promise that everyone could achieve their dreams through hard work was a lie. Hawke similarly regrets that America has ceased to be a beacon of democracy and is now the totem of capitalism. We hear Elvis discussing his annual earnings and claiming that wealth and fame haven't changed him, but the talking heads insist that America was going through an epochal period of transition at precisely the time that Preseley emerged and that he became synonymous with the kind of celebrity that inspires today's `want more' generation. 

The story rolls into New York, as Jarecki cross-cuts between Kong's theatre appearance and the King conquering the Big Apple. Newcaster Dan Rather climbs to the top of the Empire State Building and wonders what the pioneers who followed the advice to `Go West' would make of the country today. This prompts a clip of Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra and Jules Munshin in their white gob suits in On the Town (1949) and Jarecki unleashes a black, an Oriental and a white sailor on Times Square in a bid to bridge the temporal and socio-cultural gaps. Stepping into this breach, hip hop artist Immortal Technique claims that America is about to hit the equivalent of Elvis overdosing by electing Donald Trump. In the back of the Rolls, he performs a rap building on his contention that the immigrants who arrived in 19th-century American shied away from the reality that their fresh start was founded on a genocide of the indigenous people and the enslavement of trafficked Africans. 

Schilling and music critic Luc Sante claim that New York had an incalculable effect on Elvis, as he was initially intimidated by it and quickly had it eating out of his hand. Rather tries to imagine how alien the city must have felt to a poor country boy and Mike Myers joins the debate to present the Canadian perspective. He suggests America was the sibling who went off to become a movie star while Canada stayed at home with Mommy Britain and he ponders the US love of individuality and mission statements. This segues into a discussion of the way the Colonel used television to bring Elvis into every front room in the country and we learn that TV host Ed Sullivan ended his blockade of Presley when his tuxedoed rendition of `Hound Dog' to a pooch on The Steve Allen Show trashed his special on John Huston's adaptation of Moby Dick (1956). Subsequently, he became a regular guest and broke records with almost every telecast, even though ultra-conservatives were doing their darndest to get Elvis and rock'n'roll banned from the airwaves. 

As Myers and Alec Baldwin concur that Presley had the right image to project this new brand of Americanism, Rather claims that he was at his most vulnerable at the very moment of his greatest potency. But he would never be the same after he was drafted into the US Army and retired colonel Lawrence Wilkerson remembers thinking how this act influenced his generation. As we see footage of Elvis in boot camp at Ford Hood, Texas (where he learned of the death of his mother) and his arrival in Germany at the height of the Cold War, Van Jones reminds us of the imperial power that America has wielded over the last century. He also states that Elvis could not have become a global superstar without the United States being a superpower, as he never performed outside his homeland and, yet, had kids on every continent screaming and swooning over him. 

Jarecki reaches Bad Nauheim, where the US influence remains strong, as he interviews locals during a Cadillac parade. However, Marcus and Wilkerson reveal that Elvis became hooked on pills during his stay in Germany, even though he was given freedoms his comrades in arms could only dream of. It was also during this period that he met the 14 year-old Priscilla Beaulieu, who was captured by the newsreel cameras waving Elvis off from Frankfurt in March 1960. Any fears that his 18 months away would cast him into the unknown were rapidly dispelled when he guested on Frank Sinatra's TV show and was treated like a conquering hero. Schilling noticed a difference in his old friend and Marcus declares that he came back radiating an all-American confidence that effectively saw him transform from James Dean to John Wayne. 

Wilkerson reveals that he was stripped of his illusions about the American Dream while fighting in Vietnam and he joins with Van Jones in suggesting that Presley misjudged the mood of the people during the Civil Rights and anti-war protests of the 1960s and that his silence condemns him at a time when Marlon Brando and Jane Fonda were joining Muhammad Ali in refusing to accept that the US establishment was unswervingly right at all times. Chuck D laments that Elvis failed to march alongside Martin Luther King and Jarecki intercuts a speech by Bernie Sanders to imply that Presley would not have agreed with his radical brand of politics. As we see a crowd gathering around a Donald Trump fortune-telling machine, Alec Baldwin confidently predicts that he will not win the 2016 presidential election. However, he does express the concern that the `Make America Great Again' movement has a point, as the country has become benchmark for a standard of living and has stopped being a shining example to the world.

Trevor Potter, the former chair of the Federal Election Commission, reckons America is facing a crisis of democracy, as it's easier than ever to buy power and use it to consolidate status. As Immortal Technique performs `The Message and the Money' in the back of the Rolls, Jarecki leaves his audience in no doubt that he views the rise of Trump as a calamity. But he also makes it clear that it is the culmination of a drift into decline that has been happening for decades and that Elvis's life and career was merely a reflection of what was occurring around him. 

Fittingly, at this point, the Rolls breaks down again and David Simon questions why Jarecki has chosen a British car when Presley was famous for his Cadillacs. However, he smiles with resignation when he supplies his own answer about the car symbolising the smugness of the Las Vegas era and we join The Handsome Family for a backseat tune, as the journey takes us along Route 66 to Albuquerque, New Mexico. Marcus notes how vast and unspoilt the landscape seems from this highway and Schilling recalls how Elvis used to philosophise during the long treks West and reveal more of himself than he ever did in public (we earlier heard him refuse to discuss his attitude towards the Vietnam War or the decision of other celebrities to speak out). But, as the Rolls takes a spin around a rodeo ring, the consensus of the off-camera voices is that modern America can be summed up by the chasm between the forgotten in the Rust Belt and those clinging on to the past in the Republican heartlands. As the car passes Mount Rushmore, one speaker (possibly Jones) declares the USA to be an empire in decline. 

With a good deal of irony, Jarecki accompanies the entry into Hollywood with a white jump-suited Elvis singing `Walk a Mile in My Shoes'. On a Californian beach, Nicki Bluhm and the Gramblers sing the Beach Boys song `Don't Worry Baby' and former girlfriend Linda Thompson remembers how much he loved being a movie star. But Hawke is baffled why somebody with so much to say as a musician would want to spout sanitised dialogue in anodyne pictures that were totally detached from everyday reality. We see a clip of an Eddie Murphy stand-up routine mocking Presley's film phase, but Chuck D and Marcus feel sorry for him because he was swimming against a capitalist tide and was powerless to kick against the system to which he had sold his soul. 

While a fan on the Walk of Fame boasts about the stars he has seen in the flesh, M. Ward takes to the backseat to sing a song about disillusion and we see glossy colour clips from several Elvis movies that contrast starkly with the grainy monochrome images of his raw, hungry years. Hawke wonders how he must have felt when The Beatles came and stole his thunder and Myers tells a story about the Colonel covering Presley's buggy with a blanket to get past the girls at the gates of Paramount Pictures and having to continue doing it after the Fabs came and the girls changed their allegiance. We even hear John Lennon bemoan the fact that Elvis started to sound to the kids like Bing Crosby and this saddened him because he had been his inspiration as a lonely boy in Liverpool.

Actor Ashton Kutcher empathises with the situation Presley must have found himself in, as he admits to having reached a level of fame that far outstrips his talent. In a bid to deal with his frustration, Elvis apparently considered entering a religious retreat. But hairdresser Larry Geller recalls the moment Presley had an epiphany in the Arizona desert when he spotted the face of Joseph Stalin in the clouds and declared that he no longer believes in God because he realises that God is Love. He also decided to quit Hollywood and do something meaningful with his life and this bid was kickstarted by the 1968 Comeback Special (which we covered last week).

Marcus mentions the moment that Elvis picked up the microphone stand and shouted `Moby Dick' and he claims this performance can be seized upon by anybody seeking an allegory for the American Way. To his mind, however, this was a show about breaking free from the Colonel to enjoy `life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness'. Yet, no sooner had he broken one set of shackles, than he voluntarily donned another to become a cabaret caricature in Vegas. Myers remarks that they did so many nuclear tests in the desert beneath the city that it became a mutated vision of capitalism. But Marc Cooper (the author of The Last Honest Place in America) suggests that Vegas is the purest representation of the American psyche, whether we like it or not. 

As we hear `Fever' over shots of the gaudy neon signs, Freddie Glusman, the owner of Piero's and a veteran of the Rat Pack heyday, reckons that Elvis was courted by Vegas bigwigs to add a veneer of respectability to the major corporations taking over the hotels and casinos from the Mob. Cooper concurs and posits that Presley enjoyed his first couple of years on the circuit, even though he really wanted to tour and had set his heart on playing in Europe and Japan. Theories abound that the Colonel didn't want to apply for a passport and needed Elvis to stay in Vegas and help pay off his own gambling debts. But, as Myers states, this is a place where creativity is curdled by celebrity and the result is mush and Elvis's need to get through what became an ordeal saw him become increasingly dependent upon pills and fast food. 

Thompson insists he was only reliant on prescription medication, but she recognises that this made him an addict. Myers draws attention to the fact that President Nixon had made Presley a narcotics agent and we hear him telling a Vegas audience that rumours he's a heroin junkie are nonsense, when he is a karate devotee with a federal badge. The hypocrisy of this stance gives Jones the chance to highlight America's track record of serial failure through acts like the deregulation of Wall Street, the building of prisons to combat the drug problem and the declaration of war on Iraq to avenge 9/11. He laughs in despair at the craziness of the conduct of affairs and Jarecki compares the 2016 election to a nation pulling the handle of a fruit machine and hoping for the best. 

Elvis gets a little lost in this segment, as Jarecki strains to tie his theses together. But he gets back on track by meeting Monique and Sharon Brave, who recall meeting an overweight Presley to present him with a token from the Sioux nation. They got the impression he was ready to go home. This was June 1977, around the time he recorded the CBS Special that would be broadcast posthumously in October that year. Schilling and Thompson remember seeing it and being shocked, with the former claiming he called the Colonel to ask him why he had allowed his friend to be seen in such a state. Yet personal pianist Tony Brown remembers the rendition of `Unchained Melody', when Elvis sat at the keyboard, as being among the most moving performances of his entire career. 

Nearing journey's end, Jarecki meets Graceland housekeeper Nancy Rooks, who shows him how to make a fried peanut butter and banana sandwich. She recalls being summoned to his bathroom to find him on the floor pleading with her to get him help. But Hawke finds it hard to pity the obese 42 year-old on his golden toilet, as he chose to follow the big bucks rather than his heart at every crucial point in his life and Chuck D concurs that artists, musicians and film-makers have a duty to stay true to their vision, as the rich and powerful have yet to find a way to silence them. A catalogue of key events in US history since 16 August 1977 counterpoints `Unchained Melody' and it's hard not to feel crushed by the reminder of how calamitously the world has been mismanaged over the last four decades. One dreads to think what that montage will look like when the centenaries of Elvis's birth and death are marked - if we're even around to do so. 

In many ways the flipside of Raoul Peck's James Baldwin profile, I Am Not Your Negro (2016), this is a brave, if sometimes flawed bid to find links between Elvis Presley and Donald Trump. There are times when Jarecki seems to be suggesting that The King was a victim of cynical and corrupt capitalists who exploited him to line their own pockets. It seems likely that he underwent some form of indoctrination in uniform, which suggests that he was either highly impressionable, knee-jerkedly nationalistic or dismayingly stupid. But Hawke's damning summation derails any Gullible's Travels approach, as Presley's roots in poverty persuaded him to follow the dollar at every opportunity and, ultimately, he succumbed to his own hubris and excess. 

Such a conclusion is a painful one to reach for those raised on rock`n'roll, especially when one takes the misgivings of Chuck D and Van Jones into consideration. But rock has provided the soundtrack to some of the most shameful decades in recent American history and one is left to wonder how different things might have been if Elvis had shared John Lennon's imperfect, but sincere sense of social conscience. 

Despite sledgehammering some of his points and taking a few too many rumours and fabrications at face value, Jarecki just about gets away with making this up as he goes along, thanks to the canniness of his conceit, the cogency of his contributors and the precision of an editorial team comprised of Simon Barker, Alex Bingham, Èlia Gasull Balada and Laura Israel. Even in an era of fake news, this may prove too divisive to land any big awards at the end of the year. But, for all its faults (including some peculiar track choices), it will open eyes and leave many to wonder why Western civilisation was ambushed and rebranded on their watch.

Released in 2001, Rivers and Tides provided a beguiling insight into the working methods and thematic concerns of Scottish-based environmental artist Andy Goldsworthy. He has since featured in James Fox's fascinating BBC documentary, Forest, Field & Sky: Art Out of Nature, which also considered the work of James Turrell, Julie Brook, Richard Long, Charles Jencks and David Nash. Now, Goldsworthy has reunited with Thomas Ridelsheimer for Leaning Into the Wind, which adopts much the same approach as the original film, as it show Goldsworthy creating, while affording him a platform to espouse his views.

On the first leg of the travels recorded in the film, Goldsworthy goes to Ibitipoca in Brazil to play with a sunbeam piercing the roof of an abandoned shack and to admire the clay-and-dung floor made by a peasant couple, who are proud of their practicality and sceptical about an English artist coming all this way to pay them a call. The scene shifts to San Francisco, where he works with a chainsaw crew to create nicks in a pair of tree trunks that are installed in the ceiling of a small building and covered in hair-laced mud so that the process of the coating drying and cracking can be captured by a timelapse camera. 

Back in Dumfriesshire, Goldsworthy clambers through the branches of a row of small, autumnal trees. With the grey sky providing a backdrop for the harsh dusk light, the scene resembles both an early work of Scandinavian Expressionist cinema and the scene in Modern Times (1936), in which Charlie Chaplin passes through the innards of a factory machine. On a sunnier day, Goldsworthy climbs up a bigger tree and photographs the shadow of Man and Nature entwined that is cast on to the grass. He muses that he used to be rather precious about his process, but has come to realise that Nature is everywhere and that there's little point in even singling it out when discussing what he does. 

He walks by the burn that has been criss-crossed by fallen elm trees and the camera hovers in a drone over his head, as he picks his way under, along and through the gnarled branches. Back in his studio, he shows us photographs he took of one of the trees to show how he used yellow leaves and snow to emphasise the fissures in the bark that reveal the violence of the break that caused the tree to fall. He explains how yellow is a symbol of life and how sad it is that Dutch Elm Disease is removing the colour from the landscape. But he keeps finding enough leaves to work with, even though the wind blows them off the smooth black rocks he is attempting to cover. 

Goldsworthy studied art at the Lancaster Annex of Preston Polytechnic and he revisits the human-shaped chambers he carved into the rock at Morecambe Bay. He also passes the pillars he created at Clougha Pike, as he reveals his desire to leave part of himself in a landscape that had meant so much to him. The extent to which he identifies with the places in which he works is made evident in an anecdote about the shock he felt when a tree he had regularly utilised was irrevocably changed when woodsmen removed some of the branches and he created a piece with a black snowball to convey his sense of loss. 

As he works with some twigs spanning the burbling burn, Goldsworthy reveals that works often reflected what was going on in his life at the time of their creation and he is reminded of these events when he returns to the spots. However, impermanence is a key facet of his oeuvre and few items remain in situ for long. He speaks to the camera about how life doesn't pan out as one expects it to and that parting from his first wife, sculptor Judith Gregson (who was subsequently killed in a car crash), and raising a family with Tina Fiske impacted upon his changing attitudes to his work. A home movie clip from 1999 shows his children helping him with a piece and his daughter, Holly, is now one of his assistants. She sits on his shoulders linking twigs to hang from the branches of a bare tree like weeping willow strands. 

Holding a muddy hand in a waterfall, Goldsworthy shows how a simple gesture can have a profound meaning. He similarly lies on a stone during the rain to leave a dry outline and leaves his shape in a light dusting of snow on the grass. During a visit to Edinburgh, he makes another `rain shadow' on the pavement and uses red, yellow and green leaves to form lines down the middle of some stone steps. He even clambers through a hedge, with pedestrians passing him without any idea what he is doing or hoping to achieve. As far as Goldsworthy is concerned, the city is as valid a place for his art as the countryside. Hence, he created a sinuous crack running through the environs of the De Young Museum in San Francisco and a series of 25 limestone arches outside the St Louis Art Museum. 

A clever cut contrasts the Stone Sea installation with some curved branches in the jungle in Gabon, as Goldsworthy is shown trees that offer humans sanctuary from charging buffalo and elephants. He thinks it's very generous of Nature to protect humankind in this manner and another cut takes us to the Oak Room that Goldsworthy built from interwoven branches at Château La Coste in Provence. The notion of security also informs the Sleeping Stones he creates in Spain. But, while he is happy to build a space from transported boulders, he feels uneasy about cutting into the bedrock and apologises to the camera crew for getting them up so early for nothing. 

He has fewer qualms about moving boulders to form a low wall through a wood in New England, as they have previously been transported by ice and he feels they make a pertinent comment about the way people walled off expanses of land to farm. Indeed, Goldsworthy avers that he learnt more about his craft from working on farms than he did at art school. A series of shots of various sleeping stones follows, as Goldsworthy edges his way along a passage cut deep into the earth that give the impression of a wall having been cleaved in twain. 

After showing Holly a hole in a wall he created at Digne les Bains in Provence, Goldsworthy hikes into the woods to find a long-abandoned village. Holly also helps him cover his hands in poppy petals so he can immerse them in a slowly moving stream and allow the petals to float away. This contrasts with earlier shots of him blowing red and yellow petals out of his mouth and climbing a tree to shake it from within to release a cloud of pollen on the breeze. 

From these eruptions of colour, however, we return to Penpont to accompany Goldsworthy on a walk into the lush hills. It's tipping down and blowing a gale. But he explains that he sometimes gets more moments of clarity while leaning into the wind than he does in any other aspect of his life. He will be blown over from time to time, but he always gets back up to confront the elements. The symbolism may seem a bit forced, but the concept of a single figure against the landscape is mischievously revisited during the closing credit crawl, when the cut-out shape clinging to the upper branches of a bare tree at the side of a winding road suddenly moves and we realise that it had been an inanimate Goldsworthy all along. 

Once again, Ridelsheimer shows the sixtysomething Goldsworthy making fleetingly beautiful art from everything from rocks and branches to raindrops and icicles, But, while this profile is often captivating, it lacks the observational stillness that made Rivers and Tides so mesmerising. Goldsworthy speaks more frequently to the camera, as he modestly tries to explain his motivations and methods. Yet, while his work has a potent eco message, he shies away from any contentious or genuinely revelatory statements about either himself, his work or the imperilled world around him. Moreover, nothing is said about his sources of patronage or the critical response to his distinctive achievement. 

As before, Ridelsheimer's HD cinematography is discreet and delightful, while Fred Frith's jittery jazz score prevents proceedings becoming too cosy. But, coming after Jennifer Baichwal and Edward Burtynsky's Manufactured Landscapes (2006) and Watermark (2013) and James Crump's tribute to Robert Smithson, Walter De Maria and Michael Heizer in Troublemakers: The Story of Land Art (2015), this globe-trotting sequelmentary feels less intimate or substantial than its predecessor.

Another gentle soul comes under the spotlight in Gabriel Clarke and Torquil Jones's Bobby Robson: More Than a Manager. Robert William Robson was born in the Durham mining village of Langley Park and the values instilled in him there stood him in good stead during a career as both player and manager that spanned 54 years. With the 2018 Word Cup just a fortnight away, many will think back to the moment when Robson had to hold back his disappointment to console the England players who had just been beaten on penalties by West Germany in Italia 90. But, as this fine tribute demonstrates, the genial Geordie should be remembered for a great deal more. 

Nine months after a life-saving operation to remove a malignant melanoma from inside his nose, Bobby Robson became the manager of Barcelona. He was following the great Johan Cryuff and hired a young José Mourinho as his assistant coach-cum-interpreter. Among the players he inherited was Pep Guardiola, who had come through the ranks at the Nou Camp and knew inside out a club that Robson had only seen from a distance and played against a couple of timed during his spell at Ipswich Town .

We flash back to 1969, when TV interviewer Gerald Sinstadt asked the new man at Portman Road what ambitions he had for a club that many felt was in terminal decline. Although largely untried as a manager, Robson did things his own way and developed a youth policy that produced so many outstanding talents on a restricted budget that even Sir Alex Ferguson was impressed. In 1978, Ipswich won the FA Cup for the first and only time in its history in beating Arsenal by a Roger Osborne goal to nil. But Robson was just getting started.

The faith in youth demonstrated in Suffolk prompted Robson to bring the young Ronaldo to Catalonia from PSV Eindhoven and the Brazilian immediately proved his worth with a stellar performance on debut in the Spanish Super Cup against Atlético Madrid. When Ronaldo scored his famous solo goal against Compostela, Robson put his hands on his head in amazement at what he had just witnessed. and Guardiola jokes about his teammates admonishing him for refusing to pass. Yet, key to Robson's success with a team that included Luis Figo, Hristo Stoichkov, Gheorghe Popescu and Laurent Blanc was his relationship with Mourinho, who had made a huge leap to find himself on the Barcelona bench. 

Back in 1981, Robson had relied on direct communication to guide Ipswich to a UEFA Cup triumph over AZ 67 of Alkmaar. Centre back Terry Butcher recalls him being an inspiration in the dressing room. But he also admits that he could be tough in order to get the team to play his way and Robson was convinced that a squad that included John Wark, Mick Mills and Arnold Mühren was the best in Europe at the time. 

While he ran the club with the blessings of the Cobbold family, things were very different at the Nou Camp. President Josep Lluís Núñez ruled the roost and proved lukewarm in his support of Robson after the fans started to complain about his brand of football. Unbeknownst to Robson, Núñez had plans to replace him at the end of the season with Dutch coach Louis van Gaal and, consequently, he felt unable to accept an approach from Newcastle United chairman, Sir John Hall. According to Robson's wife Elsie and son Mark, he would have quit had he known about the scheming behind his back. But he felt duty bound to honour his two-year contract, especially as the club was still progressing in the Copa del Rey and the Cup Winners' Cup. 

The tenacity that Robson demonstrated at this time had first surfaced when he had been forced to abandon his boyhood dream of turning out at St James's Park and join Fulham in 1950. During spells at Craven Cottage sandwiching a stay at West Bromwich Albion, Robson became an effective midfielder, who scored twice against France in collecting the first of his 20 England caps in 1957. He made the squads for the 1958 and 1962 World Cups, but injury saw him lose his place to a young Bobby Moore. 

Two days after England were eliminated from the 1982 World Cup, Robson took over as national manager from Ron Greenwood. He knew it was going to be a challenging assignment, but hopes were high when the squad set off for Mexico in 1986. But poor results against Portugal (0-1) and Morocco (0-0) left England on the verge of elimination. However, as Gary Lineker recalls, the manager's belief in his players and himself, coupled with a change of formation, resulted in a 3-1 win over Poland, with Lineker scoring the hat-trick that changed his life. 

An easy 3-0 success over Paraguay in the next round pitted England against Argentina just four years after the countries had fought over the Falkland Islands. Lineker remembers the added frisson before the game, which was settled by two strikes by Diego Maradona. The second was a mazy run that is still ranked among one of the finest in World Cup history. But the first saw Maradona punch the ball past Peter Shilton and Robson countered his claims that the `hand of God' had intervened by stating that the `hand of a rascal' had cost Maradona any chance of being remembered for his sportsmanship.

Courage may not be the characteristic one necessarily associates with Bobby Robson, but he displayed it in abundance during his time with Barcelona. Not only did he undergo a second operation on his nose, but he also endured frequent savagings in the press. Stung by being described as `the worst coach in the world', he vowed to fight on and was vindicated on 12 March 1997 when - following a 2-2 draw in the away leg - Barça came back from 0-3 down in the quarter final against Atlético Madrid to win 5-4 on the night. Both Ronaldo and Guardiola speak about how Robson's passion had inspired them during the interval, while Ferguson notes that it's the way you respond to adversity in football that defines a man and his career. 

This bouncebackability was in evidence after Robson announced before Italia 90 that he would be joining PSV Eindhoven as soon as the tournament ended. The press branded him a traitor, when he had actually been informed by the FA that his contract would not be renewed after eight years in charge. Elsie and Mark reflect on the fake news they had to deal with in the run-up to the competition. But Robson kept his focus on the job, as he knew he had a match winner in Paul Gascoigne. He called the maverick midfielder `daft as a brush', but he knew how to get the best out of him and he set up the winners against Egypt in the crucial group game and Belgium in the Round of 16. He also played a pass that led to Lineker being fouled in the penalty area against Cameroon and he hugged Robson after the game and thanked him for his trust. Gazza claims to have felt safe under Robson's tutelate and Lineker remains touched by the bond they forged. 

Mischievously enjoying reports that fans back home were dancing in the streets, Robson planned a semi-final showdown with the Germans in Turin. A fluke deflection put the old foes 1-0 up before Lineker equalised to send the game into extra time. During the break, Robson had taken Gascoigne to one side to urge him to ensure that his teammates reached the final after he picked up a second booking and a suspension. Chris Waddle had hit the post during the additional 30 minutes, but the game went to spot kicks and Robson admitted later that he was confident that the likes of Lineker, Peter Beardsley and David Platt would score. A camera was trained on Robson's face throughout the shootout and his expression when Stuart Pearce had his kick saved shows his mindset shift, as he realises that he is going to have to console his players rather than celebrate with them. His eyes moisten as Chris Waddle blazed the ball over the bar, but Robson knew this wasn't a time to feel sorry for himself and he left the bench to be a leader. 

Following this typically English setback, Robson won consecutive titles with PSV before spending a year with Sporting Lisbon and two more with Porto. It was in Portugal that he first encountered Mourinho, who followed him to Barcelona to witness Robson embrace Catalan culture and food. Guardiola comments on his appetite for new tastes and the affection both men still feel is readily evident. Ronaldo also remains grateful for bringing a sense of calm at a time when he was being feted as the best player in the world. Yet, at the end of a season that saw a 1-0 Cup Winners' Cup success over Ajax followed by a 3-2 Copa victory over Real Betis, Ronaldo was sold to Inter Milan for a world record fee and a bitter, betrayed Robson was moved upstairs after being named UEFA Coach of the Year.

Unwilling to spend Saturday afternoons shopping, Robson accepted the Newcastle job at the age of 66. Alan Shearer credits him with healing a divided dressing room, as he scored five in an 8-0 drubbing of Sheffield Wednesda in Robson's first home game. Elsie felt pleased to be home and her husband was proud to be managing the team he had watched with his father. He didn't always get to spend the time he wanted with his family, but he needed to be in football and was aware of the price that had to be paid. This single-mindedness could sometimes manifest itself in a hardness that wasn't always seen by fans who regarded him as an avuncular figure. But Robson knew what it took to command the loyalty of his teams and bring them success. 

Yet, having taken Newcastle into the Champions League and to the semi-finals of the UEFA Cup in 2004, John Hall and Freddy Shepherd reacted to unrest among some of the overpaid and pampered younger players by sacking their manager. Ferguson was bemused by the decision, but Robson took the dismissal with customary dignity, even though he knew it would bring down the curtain on his career. He channelled his energies into keeping an eye on Gazza and launching the Sir Bobby Robson Foundation after he survived a fifth battle with cancer. However, surgeon Huw Davies opted not to tell him that a lung infection would shorten his life, as he knew his patient well enough after treating him over 15 years. But Robson revelled in leading a team again and worked tirelessly to raise funds for a research centre that he hoped would become his longest lasting legacy. 

Five days after being wheeled on to the pitch at St James's for a 2009 charity match between England and Germany, Sir Bobby Robson died at his home in County Durham at the age of 76. Gazza wells up as he recalls him urging him to play well. Guardiola applauds his achievements in four countries, while Lineker considers him the best English manager of all time. Most movingly, Mourinho claims that his impact will continue to be felt, as a person only truly dies when the last person who loved them disappears. 

There's little more to be said about a wonderful man and a fine film. Veteran TV journalist Gabriel Clarke's script deftly flits between the various stages of Robson's career to reveal the man behind the manager. Editor Steve Williams also makes an exceptional job of linking the footage and those hoping to see the clip of Robson dancing in his blue suit will be rewarded in the closing montage. However, there's a new treat in store for devotees, as he drops the Cup Winners' Cup while showing it off to the Barcelona fans and polishes it with his sleeve in the hope that no one had noticed. It sums up a man of great charm, humour, instinct and integrity.

Two years after the momentous 23 June referendum and with crucial deadlines seeming to come and go with every passing week, Britain is no nearer knowing how it will leave the European Union. As in-fighting within the Conservative Party (which, frankly, brought us to this juncture in the first place) complicates progress made no easier by the EU's determination to dissuade other member states from following the same course of action, David Nicholas Wilkinson wades into the debate with Postcards From the 48%. Refusing to apologise for its stance, this is less a Remoaner charter than an last ditch attempt to explain why going it alone would represent one of the gravest mistakes in British history. Moreover, it's a also an expression of regret on behalf of 16 million silenced voices to the nations they are about to leave behind.

Joining tens of thousands of others on a London march organised by Peter French, Wilkinson canvasses opinions from a range of anti-Brexiteers, as they listen to speeches by Peter Tatchell, Alastair Campbell and Patrick Stewart. There's no doubting the passion of the speakers, but there's little substance to their emotive utterances and this lack of in-depth facts and analysis has dogged the entire process. As actress Miriam Margolyes states (in the house physically closest to Europe in mainland Britain), a seismic decision was taken on the basis of misinformation and academic Adrian Low uses a pie chart to break down the result into the 17.4 million who voted to leave, the 16.1 million who wanted to stay, the 12.9 million who opted not to cast a ballot and the 19 million who were ineligible for reasons of age or non-registration. 

Low notes the age discrepancy between the Leave and Remain camps, while Nina De Ayala Parker from Our Future Our Choice reveals that 80% of women aged 18-24 voted to stay and former Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg regrets the fact that the victors have chosen to exclude the vanquished from what should be a democratic progress towards separation. Rachel Johnson (Boris's younger sister) recalls the anguish she felt on returning from France after the result was declared and this sense of schism within families and between long-standing friends is echoed by the ordinary people Wilkinson interviews - one of whom admits breaking the law in order to let his 17 year-old grandson use his ballot paper to have a say that had been denied him when youths of the same age had been allowed to vote in the referendum on Scottish independence. 

According to Matt Kelly, the former Daily Mail reporter who moved to Norwich to found The New European, the Leave vote reflected a frustration at the failure of the domestic political system rather than the EU per se and he regrets that an epochal decision was made were, essentially, the wrong reasons. In Folkestone, Baroness Wheatcroft laments the fact that the campaign was conducted in such a vitriolic manner, with the usual rules of political engagement being cast aside in favour of ranting and abuse. 

In Wales, 47.5% voted to remain, while 52.5% voted to leave and Wilkinson travels to Criccieth and Ebbw Vale to meet small business adviser Gethin Jones and steelworker Pasty Taylor to learn how many commercial and infrastructure projects were partially funded by the EU. Both men are in no doubt that Westminster would not have provided such support, with Taylor going so far as to declare Wales the forgotten part  of the United Kingdom. By contrast, Scots voted 62% to 38% in favour of remaining and Wilkinson meets journalist Lesley Riddoch in Fife so she can explain how EU cash has transformed large areas of the Highlands and Islands, as well as the post-industrial conurbations. She also mentions that Scotland has been pro-European for a lot longer than England and she feels that the wrench will be more keenly felt north of the border as a result. 

But the place where the new era will pose the most problems is Northern Ireland, which voted 55.8% against 44.2% in favour of Remain. Wilkinson visits Omagh to recall the impact of the Troubles on the province and how the EU played a key role in the Good Friday Agreement that ended them. Bob Geldof admits he never thought the conflict would end and now can't believe that its spectre might loom again because of the imposition of a hard border. He also goes to the PC-listed Derry/Londonderry to meet SDLP MP and former Deputy First Minister Mark Durkan, who recalls how the peace process was rooted in a unique vision of Ireland that few anticipated would be compromised by a British withdrawal from the EU. Fearing a return to the `borderism' of the past, Durkan concedes that many resent the fact that the island faces an uncertain future because of decisions taken outside of its perameters. 

Leaving the picturesque village of Pettigo - the site of the last battle between the IRA and the British Army, which straddles the Fermanagh-Donegal border - Wilkinson returns to England, which voted to quit the EU by 53.4% to 46.6%. Arriving in Leave bastion Stoke-on-Trent, he states that the sheer size of the English population meant that it had the casting vote in the referendum, regardless of how the other countries swung. As his father worked in the pottery industry, Wilkinson knows the city well and accepts that change seems an attractive alternative to those who feel they have nothing left to lose. He also accepts that those who voted to leave resent the patronising preaching of elitist Remainers they feel have no understanding of their plight. However, he points out that many of the deprived areas that agreed with Boris Johnson and Michael Gove will lose the EU funding that has been helping to regenerate communities neglected by the British government. 

Using another chart, Wilkinson also demonstrates how the £130 that each person donates to Britain's net contribution to the EU represents only 1.1% of government spending. He notes in passing how Brexiteers misrepresented this figure before meeting philosopher AC Grayling, who highlights the places in Hansard that confirm that the government was never duty-bound to implement the result of the referendum, as its purpose was intended to gauge the mood of the nation not change its direction. While he contends that the vote gave no legitimacy to mandatory withdrawal, Clegg, Campbell and Durkan echo the sentiments of the House of Commons website that Britain had never surrendered sovereignty to the EU and that arguments to the contrary during the campaign were at best fallacious and at worst mendacious. 

In a bid to prevent Theresa May from triggering Article 50 without a parliamentary vote, campaigners including Gibraltarian Paul Cartwright and anti-DUP Unionist Raymond McCord sought an injunction in the High Court. But, as MPs were prevented by the whips from voting with their consciences, the legislation passed through the Commons and a letter was sent to the European Council on 29 March 2017 announcing Britain's desire to leave the EU. Within weeks, Brexit Secretary David Davis was forced to admit that the government had conducted no impact assessments of how withdrawal would affect several crucial sectors of society. Grayling finds it astonishing that people voted to leave without having any idea what the consequences might be and Durkan stresses that the Irish government did its research so that it could be prepared for any eventuality.  

Heading to Sheffield (which voted 51% to 49% to leave), Wilkinson meets steel magnate Sir Andrew Cook, who deplores the impact that the decision has had on economic conditions and fears the imposition of ruinous trade tariffs once Britain leaves the Single Market. In Poole (58.2% leave to 41.8% remain), Lush Cosmetics founder Mark Constantine is equally downbeat about future prospects and reveals that he has opened factories in Germany and France to circumvent potential tariffs. Gethin Jones explains how the loss of free trade risks decimating the sheep trade in Gwynedd (58.1% remain to 41.9% leave), while Lib Dem MEP Catherine Bearder meets Wilkinson in the busy port of Dover (62.2% leave to 37.8% remain) to declare how leaving the EU deprives us of a voice in the shaping of policies that will still govern our trading strategies. 

Bearder also dispels the myth that EU-imposed fishing quotas have restricted British trawlermen, as 60% are directly dictated by the UK ministry. Baroness Kennedy takes up this point by highlighting the importance of reciprocity in making good laws work effectively and she worries that isolation will hinder the process of justice. Alastair Campbell chimes in that the Brexiteers have dismissed protests without regard for long-term impact and predicts that a falling pound will precipitate a diplomatic decline that can only make Britain weaker. Grayling concurs that going solo at a time when other nations have formed their own trading groups in imitation of the EU seems ill-considered to put it mildly. 

Keen to bring the two sides of the debate together, Vanity Fair editor Henry Porter organised a forum and novelist Ian McEwan, broadcaster Joan Bakewell and journalist Will Hutton were among those to answer the call. They regret the fact that the Brexiteers refuse to engage with them and resort to denigration in brushing their arguments aside. But Nick Clegg urges young people to take a stance, as they will be the ones who will have to live with the consequences of a decision they played so little part in shaping. 

One of the issues they will need to tackle is immigration and Grayling states categorically that migrant workers are net contributors to the UK economy and that it will struggle to work smoothly without them. Moreover, Jon Danzig from Reasons2Remain notes that all aspects of immigration law were debated by parliament rather than imposed by Brussels and he draws attention to the fact that we retained a good deal of autonomy by opting out of the Euro and Schengen zones. By leaving the EU, however, we lose the right to negotiate and will have to accept or refuse whatever terms are presented to us with no comeback.

An estimated 3.7 million EU nationals currently reside in the UK, while I.2 million Brits live on the continent. Wilkinson goes to see the Polish War Memorial in London with Piotr Szkopiak, whose father was the foreign minister in the last government in exile. He outlines the role that Polish airmen played in the Battle of Britain, while the late Liselotte Marshall recalls finding sanctuary in the UK in 1938 after she was driven out of Nazi Germany for being Jewish. Since the referendum, those entitled to German and other passports have been applying for them so that they can remain within the European Union. Bakewell and Geldof fear that English nationalism has set in motion a process of unravelling that will see both Britain and the EU break up and individual nation states return to bellicosity in order to protect their interests.

As the most cosmopolitan city in this country, London voted in favour of remaining by 59.9% to 40.1%. Dr Bettina Schoenberger regrets that she was denied a vote in the referendum, in spite of working within the NHS for 22 years. Fellow medic Rachel Clarke mourns the fact that so many old people voted for Brexit without seemingly being aware that the foreign nationals on whom they will rely for health and social care will be forced to leave the UK and Matt Kelly echoes her annoyance that blatant lies like the weekly £350 million of additional funding for the NHS were allowed to stand uncorrected. He is even more aggrieved that they were brushed under the carpet during the June 2017 General Election, which Prime Minister May called in order to secure a larger majority for a Hard Brexit. 

Wilkinson records the count that saw his MP, Labour Remainer Ruth Cadbury, increase her majority by almost 12,000. She puts this down to an anti-Brexit bounce, as May lost seats and had to form an alliance of convenience with the pro-Brexit Arlene Foster of the Democratic Unionist Party. Durkan suspects this will make it easier to bring about Irish unification, while Riddoch hopes that Scotland will be able to cut its own deal with the EU and that England pulls its head out of the sand because its decline will have an incalculably negative effect upon its neighbours. 

As Campbell launches a red bus declaring that leaving the EU will cost Britons a whopping £2000 million a week, Wilkinson follows the campaign to Manchester (60.4% remain to 39.6% leave) to see Campbell play `Ode to Joy' on the bagpipes and academic Bonnie Greer join Grayling, Vince Cable and Simon Allison from Tories Against Brexit on a platform calling for Britain to retain its ties to Europe. Their well-meaning sentiments lack the cogency and potency of Matt Kelly's denunciation of the Orwellian insistence on making 23 June the last word on a process that is constantly evolving. He believes that democracy would be best served by a second vote once the realities of Brexit have become clear. Cable and Durkan support this viewpoint and Clegg reminds the audience that David Davis and John Redwood initially advocated a two-step process that would give the electorate (or, at least, the referendum constituency) a chance to change its mind - as it would do if it had received a damning survey after agreeing to buy a house. 

As OFOC's Femi Oluwole (one of the few black voices heard in the film) declares, British political life has been brought to a standstill by Brexit and that government needs to refocus on the issues that mould daily life. But, even as the clock ticks down, we are no nearer knowing the precise nature of our fate. After 18 months of filming, Wilkinson finally finds the Union Jack flying beside the EU flag on a public building. But Hammersmith Town Hall is very much in a minority and this reluctance to nail colours to the mast is hampering the debate. Wondering whether the vote might have turned out differently if the European hymn had been scored by Elgar rather than Beethoven, Wilkinson reveals that age shifts within the British population are predicted to bring about a Remain majority by the summer of 2020. Convinced that a future generation will apply to rejoin, he hopes that the member states will remember the 48% and reward their trust and loyalty accordingly. 

It would be fascinating to see an equivalent Leave documentary, as this controlled cry of anguish and anger is going to serve as a red rag to the British Bulldog. It may be full of sobering statistics and eminently sensible opinions, but this is as much propaganda as any broadcast produced by the opposition during the campaign. Moreover, it sometimes smacks of the chatterati air of nannyish superiority that continues to alienate so many Brexiteers. On occasion, it also echoes what came to be called the Project Fear approach. But Wilkinson is fully entitled to opt against balanced argument in order to present the Remain message as cogently and concisely as possible. 

His decision to venture out from the Westminster Bubble is a good one and some of the more interesting insights come from the Celtic Fringe. He is also wise in avoiding frontline politicians, although there might have been room for a discussion of the impact of the Corbyn Factor on the ongoing process, as the Labour leader is playing as critical a role in its conduct as Theresa May. Alongside the regional diversity, a little more input might have been gleaned from ethnic communities and the lower classes. It might also have been instructive to hear at least one official voice from within the EU grieving for our imminent departure. However, Wilkinson has done well to cover a range of topics and respond to the ever-shifting situation without becoming overly dogmatic and without demonising the opposition. But the overriding emotion his film generates is sadness, as we stand to lose so much and are still very much in the calm before the inevitable storm.