Possible Spoilers. One of my decent prayers to our Lord: The day of resurrection of this lovable study on DVD cometh.I enjoyed it first some 13 years ago in Münster, Westfalia.Since then ,I have seen it probably 50 times or so.
It cares about the last short period of Scottish poet Gowan Mc Land`s life.He had a dismissal from a professorship of poetry and now unfortunately is condemned to earn money with celebrating his artwork in clubs of interested housewives, New England.The housewives, which are shown there, don`t have real ambitions with artistry or poetry;they hope it could be entertaining to watch a person, whose only purpose is to make weird things like poems.This becomes very clear at the end of one of Gowan`s public readings;no one in the audience becomes aware when the performance is over, except the artist himself;he has to give his "fans" permission to applause. That`s a main subjekt here.The span beetween Gowan`s art and the demandings of ordinary life are heavy to handle for him.But,God almighty, suddenly,at a point,an artist can be overwhelmed by the power of profanity ;when falling in love with a beautiful young student-Geneva. The comical grandeur of this flic is in the splendid deconstruction of bourgeois mainstream opinions and the securities of conventionalism.For example,McLand has an invitation to a restaurant; there he points out that it`s one of the great deficits of the "old" Europe(to evoke a term of our beloved Donald Rumsfeld),not to be able to overrule the cultural degeneration of the"new"world(USA)(!).Such provoking black jokes you are invited to enjoy one after another. I am in the mood to praise the handling of entire human problems in this underrated,forgotten and adorable genius stroke for ever, but judge for yourself.This is the stuff celluloid was made for.10 stars of 10.
It cares about the last short period of Scottish poet Gowan Mc Land`s life.He had a dismissal from a professorship of poetry and now unfortunately is condemned to earn money with celebrating his artwork in clubs of interested housewives, New England.The housewives, which are shown there, don`t have real ambitions with artistry or poetry;they hope it could be entertaining to watch a person, whose only purpose is to make weird things like poems.This becomes very clear at the end of one of Gowan`s public readings;no one in the audience becomes aware when the performance is over, except the artist himself;he has to give his "fans" permission to applause. That`s a main subjekt here.The span beetween Gowan`s art and the demandings of ordinary life are heavy to handle for him.But,God almighty, suddenly,at a point,an artist can be overwhelmed by the power of profanity ;when falling in love with a beautiful young student-Geneva. The comical grandeur of this flic is in the splendid deconstruction of bourgeois mainstream opinions and the securities of conventionalism.For example,McLand has an invitation to a restaurant; there he points out that it`s one of the great deficits of the "old" Europe(to evoke a term of our beloved Donald Rumsfeld),not to be able to overrule the cultural degeneration of the"new"world(USA)(!).Such provoking black jokes you are invited to enjoy one after another. I am in the mood to praise the handling of entire human problems in this underrated,forgotten and adorable genius stroke for ever, but judge for yourself.This is the stuff celluloid was made for.10 stars of 10.