The Hart of London (1970) User Reviews

Kino Bruitalism

[sibleybridges · 6/10 · 22 September 2021]

You know I'm bored at work when I have time to watch this experimental art piece that's from the early days of the Kino Bruitalism (Noise Cinema) movement. This is an 80 minute mashup of homemade videos of various things around his hometown, vacation footage, stock news footage, and nature scenes both homemade and stock footage where Jack Chambers layered them on top of each other while the score (can noise be a score?) plays as a cacophony of traffic, machinery, and various forms of running water from a faucet to ocean waves.

***Grotesque spoilers for something absolutely no one is ever going to watch***

The scenes of a sheep slaughterhouse were pretty out there, but then the director decided you needed to see it all again in color. From reading about this movie, I get he was dying from leukemia and was doing an exploration of the life and death cycle, but there are some things that are maybe too much realism to be put on screen. I think there is also a human birth intercut with these scenes. I have to guess that's what was going on because it was very hard to tell what was going on with the quick cuts and multi layers. It may have also been a stillborn sheep being birthed since we get plenty of that imagery as well.

Watched on YouTube.

Beautifully confusing film

[mohaas · 10/10 · 27 June 2000]

I've decided that I like to be confused. When you don't know what you're seeing, you can no longer rely on your preconceptions because they're of no help. You end up seeing things from a much newer and fresher perspective than films which are easier to watch with clearly designated beginnings, middles, and ends.

*The Hart of London* is a deeply confusing film. That's its strength. I found that I couldn't even guess at a meaning for what I was watching until a third of the way into the film. Then my hypothesis was challenged and revised at least three times more throughout the film. By the end, I came up with a theory for what I had just seen, but no definite conclusions. Of course, the best films are ones which leave you pondering long after the theater.

What starts out as a nature=good and city=bad film ends up exploring the difficult but somewhat hidden nature of life in both city and forest. The "heart" of the film actually ends up being quite a spiritual one (at least for me) with something profound to say about man's relationship to the world around him which is at once both beautiful and foreboding. The last third of the film was one of the most difficult but rewarding experiences I've had to sit through in a theater.

If you love to be confused as a way of experiencing something new, see this film.

Difficult to watch, but rewarding...

[Corgan-8 · 27 September 1999]

This film was more difficult to watch than any other film I have ever seen. The first half an hour is almost completely over-exposed, so that you can barely make out any images at all. After a while, you start to see things that aren't there. All of a sudden, you're treated to some of the most disturbing imagery I have ever seen in any movie (including Brakhage's The Act of Seeing With One's Own Eyes), followed by serenity--a very strange progression. But it's worth seeing for the effect it has on your perception and understanding of yourself in relation to the filmmaker as he searches for the heart of London, Ontario.