Gideon Koppel’s 2008 Welsh documentary, “Sleep Furiously,” coursing that small country’s green, increasingly unpopulated countryside, is the kind of image-rich movie that pops on a large screen and lingers in memory. Koppel’s immaculate sense of space and composition in the gorgeous countryside (plus dogs) where the population ages and old habits die hard makes the film more present than merely nostalgic. Other U. K. filmmakers are assaying the ruminative style of digression, like the obstinate Patrick Keiller (“London,” “Robinson in Space”) but “Sleep” is more of a school with the recent Italian “Le Quattro Volte,” which played the Music Box in June, but with more spark in its step. The music is by Aphex Twin, and rightly so. It has everything to do with the hypnotic character of the hillocks and sky, of the shift of rain, the shafts of light, the scatter of ground animals, if little obvious to do with the lives of its subjects. 94m. (Ray Pride)
Ray Pride is Newcity’s Senior Editor and Film Critic. He is a contributing editor of Filmmaker magazine.
Ray’s history of Chicago Ghost Signs is planned for publication next year. Previews of the project are on Twitter and on Instagram. More photography on Instagram.
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