Thursday, October 11, 2012

London Film Fest 2012 - Day 2 - THE ROAD: A STORY OF LIFE AND DEATH



I was largely bored and unimpressed by Marc Isaacs documentary, rather portentously titled THE ROAD: A STORY OF LIFE AND DEATH.  The stakes are nowhere near so high in this 75 minute doc about immigrants who have settled in the North West of London along its A5 highway - a road that has run through London since Roman times.  

The film is organised in a rather haphazard way, giving very little of the history of the A5, and not following it in any kind of logical manner. Different characters are introduced and their stories intercut but there's no real rationale to the editing or indeed narrative force.  We move rather randomly from current and first wave Irish immigrants, to men who have come from Nepal and Kashmir, to a former air-stewardess from Germany and most tragicomically an old Jewish lady who fled Hitler's Vienna.

The rambling 75 minute doc probably contains a decent 60 minute TV doc once an editor has knocked it into shape. Moreover, the rather lacklustre handheld camerawork won't be as distracting on the small screen.

THE ROAD: A STORY OF LIFE AND DEATH played the London Film Festival 2012. The film does not yet have a commercial release date, nor indeed an IMDB page. 

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