the voyage to anywhere
by Douglas Messerli
Bryony Ive (screenplay), Gabrielle Russell
(director) Keel / 2004 [11 minutes]
One of the most beautiful “coming of age”
films I’ve seen in a long time is British director Gabrielle Russell’s Keel.
The film is so focused on its images that, in fact, it could have been a
silent film, except that the voices of these British working-class kids is
important just to comprehend that in this particular cinematic voyage we are
not traveling back to the territory of E. M. Forster’s Maurice, for
example, or have somehow wandered into the boating house of an Evelyn Waugh
novel.
In
this 11-minute short, the boys, played by Tomas Kvederavicios and Tom Harding,
have somehow stumbled into a seemingly abandoned shed where an oaken rowboat is
hanging from chains above a dirty body of water. The boys seem to have broken
in for no apparent reason, themselves wondering at the incredible sight,
calling out “Where the fuck did that come from?”—immediately erasing any
romantic notions we may have of them or their discovery.
The
boys see the boat, in fact, as the perfect place to light up a joint and almost
immediately climb, a bit unsteady on their feet, into the swinging vessel. And
a few seconds later sitting across from one another wondering “hoose” boat it
might be, “ours now,” and naming the boat, without a great deal of imagination
“The Great Green,” they seem slightly at awe of the whole experience.
Sitting across from one another one lights up the joint, smoking it, the
other taking out the lantern they have found within and lighting it. Smoke
rises, as one lays out on the bottom of keel, the other eventually joining, the
camera, at first, showing only smoke rising from within before shifting so that
we might observe them laying side by side.
Yet there is something magical here, which we’ve already noted in the
cinematography and the very wonder of them coming upon it and feeling it
represents a special object and space. Within minutes, they even begin to
imagine themselves out on a body of water floating somewhere they cannot quite
express (“Where do you think we would go?” “Anywhere....it’s just us, we could
end up anywhere.”) while, given their lack of imagination, they consider only
using it as a place to escape and smoke.
We
do, however, also recognize that it soon does indeed represent a kind a voyage
for them as together, their backs flat on the hull, they begin noticing the
reflections of the water upon the walls of the shed and, very slowly, recognize
their own bodies as sharing in the magic space the light creates. If they begin
by looking upward as if to the sky, one, slowly revealing an increasing
awareness of the special moment through his facial gestures, turns his face to
the side to look at the other, the second eventually following suit. And
suddenly, as if by magic, these tough-seeming kids kiss.
One stands soon after, not necessarily pulling away or even angry or
embarrassed about their mutual act, but almost in contemplation of it, as if a
bit stunned by it having happened. The other also rises, joining his friend as
they sit both as if in deep thought. Obviously they cannot answer for their
actions, nor do they attempt to. They simply sit, sharing the joint, and the
extraordinary quiet lap of the water underneath. They have already returned
from a place they never before imagined, and are unsure whether they want to
ever travel there again.
Los Angeles, August 22, 2021
Reprinted from World Cinema Review (August
2021).
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