Death of a Speechwriter was David Hopkins’ directorial contribution to the Sweet Disaster series, which he also conceived, produced and penned a number of the scripts for. Much gratitude to Sleeping Weazel, the Boston-based theatre production company originally founded by Hopkins, for hosting the film upon their Vimeo account, so that I not only had the opportunity to see it, but am also able to share it with ease.
Of all the films in the Sweet Disaster series (or rather, the four that I’ve seen – Paradise Regained continues to elude me), this one stands out as easily the most minimalist. There’s no particularly elaborate plotting or animation here, just a clever script and effective direction that combine to create a chilling scenario in which a speechwriter (voiced by Tony Robinson) is haunted, posthumously, by the empty clichĂ©s which have helped sow the seeds of his own destruction. Soundbites from the writer’s latest pro-nuclear arms speech are juxtaposed with his lifeless body in a jumbled, disorientated fashion, revealing not only the hollowness of the words, but also the sweltering chaos they've been tailored to shroud under the guise of control and formality.
Despite the film's minimalist set-up, it's not without its quirks. One of the more curious elements of the film is the odd, disembodied growling heard in the early stages, reminiscent of a wild beast entering and prowling the premises - and which, by presumably no coincidence, is identical to the ominous rumblings of a particularly terrifying character featured in Babylon, the Sweet Disaster film directed by Aardman’s Peter Lord and David Sproxton. Both films use a common sound to signify the horrors of nuclear destruction, giving it a monstrous presence that's here made particularly eerie by its lack of any corporeal form. We sense that there is something else present in the room with the deceased speechwriter, circling him and contemplating his demise, yet it remains entirely out of view.
In the next shot, we become aware that there is now a figure seated at the table, revealed largely in silhouette, and the spools of the tape recorder are shown to be turning - evidently, we have jumped back to an earlier point in time, with the speechwriter alive and listening to his recorded notes. As the camera continues to circle the room, the film intermittently switches back and forth between the speechwriter in life and death, the latter signified not only by his sprawled-out corpse, but by the motionlessness of the tape recorder, and the washed-out, pale brown colours of his environs post-attack. As with Dreamless Sleep, the film purposely omits any sequence depicting the moment of devastation itself. We are left merely with the juxtaposition of the preceding scene and the aftermath, the common link being the jumble of soundbites which plays continuously over both - a chaotic slew of false assurances that rings particularly hollow in a world reduced to lifeless, smoking rubble.
No comments:
Post a Comment