Marc Isaacs stakes a claim as documentary film-making's pre-eminent people person in a subtle film about the immigrants along the A5
The road in Marc Isaacs's highly engaging documentary is the A5, the 300-mile Roman legacy connecting Holyhead to Marble Arch. Isaacs installed his camera at various points to record its many travellers: marching Muslims, Buddhist monks seeking nirvana in Colindale, an alcoholic ex-navvy, whose loneliness is horribly compelling and rarely observed this honestly. As proposed by his 2001 doc Lift – which sought out characters in a tower block – Isaacs may be British cinema's pre-eminent people person, locating strangeness, melancholy and joy in the urban landscape, and those who inhabit it. Almost every subject might have merited their own film, but the brisk diversity is central to what emerges as a subtly pointed, humorous and, above all, humane contribution to the immigration debate: the road has been retraced as a lifeline,...
The road in Marc Isaacs's highly engaging documentary is the A5, the 300-mile Roman legacy connecting Holyhead to Marble Arch. Isaacs installed his camera at various points to record its many travellers: marching Muslims, Buddhist monks seeking nirvana in Colindale, an alcoholic ex-navvy, whose loneliness is horribly compelling and rarely observed this honestly. As proposed by his 2001 doc Lift – which sought out characters in a tower block – Isaacs may be British cinema's pre-eminent people person, locating strangeness, melancholy and joy in the urban landscape, and those who inhabit it. Almost every subject might have merited their own film, but the brisk diversity is central to what emerges as a subtly pointed, humorous and, above all, humane contribution to the immigration debate: the road has been retraced as a lifeline,...
- 2/22/2013
- by Mike McCahill
- The Guardian - Film News
I was having an argument with myself yesterday on the way home from work. It got quite heated. I was assessing the length of time it takes me to get home, and thus attempting to gauge roughly how much free time I would have before sleep stole me away for the night. I realised that it was perfectly possible to estimate the journey to a fairly accurate time-frame: between 50 and 54 minutes. That means that, leaving work at bang on six like any other dispassionate employee, I must arrive home between 6:50 and 6:54. The automatic reaction to this was to simply round up to 7 o’clock. And surely this is the normal thing to do? I wasn’t exactly going to say “right, its 6:54 now and I’ll probably hit the sack around midnight, so that gives me 5 hours and 6 minutes of free time”. That would be absurd. Rounding...
- 9/25/2009
- by Nicholas Deigman
- t5m.com
IMDb.com, Inc. takes no responsibility for the content or accuracy of the above news articles, Tweets, or blog posts. This content is published for the entertainment of our users only. The news articles, Tweets, and blog posts do not represent IMDb's opinions nor can we guarantee that the reporting therein is completely factual. Please visit the source responsible for the item in question to report any concerns you may have regarding content or accuracy.