Review by
Eric Hillis
Directed by: Colin Hickey
Starring: Liam Cotter, Clara Rose Hickey, Colin Hickey
A small miracle of a film, Colin Hickey's (who wrote, directed,
shot, edited and features in the project) intensely personal
Perennial Light, with its elegiac musings on existence, death and time, provides a
profound cinematic experience. We open upon a shot of a pregnant belly,
which is held for a few beats before transitioning, via
Paolo Chianta's expressive animations, to sequences of the globe;
twilight forests; sunshine and the inhabitant of the tummy eventually
being breastfed. Via the pewtered solemnity of Hickey's exclusively
monochrome photography, the sweeping themes of
Perennial Light are made clear: this is a film about life.
Or, more specifically, a life, as we track our hungry central character
growing up into a boy, a disillusioned teen and then somewhat content man.
The bildungsroman is structured by way of significant life instances, some
of which are monumental in the moment but also others which gain import
over time (in a personal year which has seemingly been filled with death;
people close to me, friends of friends, Cat Glover; I've thought about
memory's synergy with narrative: life really is composed of moments, with
our very own editors of the subconscious Schoonmakering the irrelevance
out of the main feature recall). One such instance is the sudden death of
the adolescent main character's best friend: one day they are there, the
next absent (that's the other thing about your own and others' life - just
like the films you watch, it comes to an end #profound). For people so
young, to be aware of death's sudden and imperial powers is especially
cruel. Hickey discloses the loss by repeating tableaus, which earlier, due
to the film's vivid and painterly mien, were iconic shots of unity, such
as the young pals silhouetted in a wide doorway, looking out to the sea
and a hopeful future, as post-tragedy one shots of the boy alone; the
oceanic approach of time now fatal and uncertain.
Dialogue free, the film mediates through its collocation of imagery,
becoming a visual poem where the black and white representations are
deeply symbolic, heavy with shaded meaning. Chianta's pencilled animations
work in dialogue with Hickey's lens: commenting on the significance of
events or expressing the protagonist's inner life, while the camera (often
a drone, objectively distanced) revokes memory. As the boy begin to
spiral, associating with rough kids and the like, we see scratchy doodles
of ribs, an empty eye, a disembodied ribcage: memento moris which haunt
our lad as he moodily hangs out in the rain. It reminded me of the
heart-breaking naivety of the animated inserts of antique children's
television shows, with their crudely rendered wonders.
Throughout the film, a score which ranges from the doomy, the folksy to
piano-led backs the montage, along with diegetic noises which punctuate
the sequences (bird song and the like, along with, as the boy becomes a
man, an industrial cacophony of the harbour). At times the score is a
little obtrusive and juxtaposes the otherwise elegance of the imagery,
which is where Perennial Light's generous meaning abides. Recurring conceits involve soil being dug for
planting, the quotidian clockwork of the harbour work: arrangements which
serve to instruct us that life, whatever happens, will continue. Thus, the
film's title is an oblique reference to hope, that indefinable abstract
which keeps us going. Perennial Light ends with the main
character, once more racing on a bike (the film often shows him in motion,
literalising the perpetual motion of existence) towards the harbour as he
has done throughout the narrative. This final time, however, he is joined
by his children; a boy and a girl. The trio gaze in silhouette out towards
the rolling seas.
Perennial Light is in Irish cinemas
from November 29th. A UK release has yet to be announced.
