Editor's Abstract
- In Some Kind of Intimacy, the UK director Toby Bull considers the unknowable inner lives of the sheep that roam near, and often on, his parents’ graves.
- During a phonecall with his brother, he wonders: do they in some way know that their parents are buried below? Could sheep ever know such a thing? Would they even need to know for the scene to have some sort of meaning?
- Comprised of sparse shots of the landscape in Shropshire where his parents are buried, Bull’s short film forms an original and poignant meditation on loss.
Notes
- A pleasant enough 'reflection on loss', as the Editor puts it.
- But there's no indication that the sheep have any mental lives whatever, or realise that there are 'dead people' beneath their feet. That's not to say that the sheep have no mental lives, but there's no evidence from the video that they are having profound thoughts about mortality. Maybe the equivalent of canine thoughts - 'thinking about sausages' while looking rather wise, as my daughter Naomi said of my late dog Henry.
- This is exemplified by the shots of the ram repeatedly head-butting a bush.
- Toby Bull spouts sentimental nonsense while his brother adopts the sensible, sceptical line. The brother says that the Greeks talk to their dead parents in graveyards but - as far as he knows, said with a bit of a smirk - the parents don't talk back.
- Finally, and strangely, the only shot of a gravestone doesn't seem to be of Toby Bull's parents.
Comment:
Text Colour Conventions (see disclaimer)
- Blue: Text by me; © Theo Todman, 2023
- Mauve: Text by correspondent(s) or other author(s); © the author(s)