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Film Comment Selects 2016

February 17 - 24, 2016

This offbeat musical by songwriter and Kinks lead singer Ray Davies revisits the themes of his songs of modern discontent and nostalgia and features nine original Davies compositions, camerawork by Roger Deakins, and an early appearance by Tim Roth.

DIRECTOR
Ray Davies
YEAR
1984
COUNTRY
UK
RUNTIME
58 minutes
FORMAT
35mm

The little-seen first and only film by Ray Davies, songwriter and lead singer of The Kinks, is an offbeat musical that takes off from and expands the possibilities of the then-newly emergent music-video format while revisiting many of the themes of Davies’s songs of modern discontent and nostalgia. The reverie of a middle-aged man (Kenneth Colley) over the course of his train commute plays out memories of tarnished dreams, regrets, and unsettling imaginings and intimations of dark impulses, accompanied by nine Davies compositions that together encapsulate a life of quiet desperation. Modestly mounted but made with great assurance, with camerawork by Roger Deakins, it’s a time capsule of 1980s London that could almost be a rebuke to the bombast of Pink Floyd The Wall and its more overblown vision of modern discontent. Bonus early appearance by Tim Roth.

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