sleep furiously

 

I have been rediscovering an award winning documentary from 2007  called Sleep Furiously a quietly  melancholic film set in a small hill- farming community in Trefeurig, mid Wales, Ceredigion, 10 miles from Aberystwyth.

A place where director Gideon Koppel's parents, both refugees  who escaped Nazi Germany in the 1930's  found a home. It's a landscape that's changing rapidly as small scale agriculture, which characterised the area, is disappearing  and the last generation who inhabited a pre-mechanised world is dying out.

The title of the film is a reference to social critic and activist Noam Chomsky’s sentence “Colorless green ideas sleep furiously”.This phrase was given as an example of a grammatically correct, but meaningless, linguistic construction. Chomsky’s intention was that people would recognise that the language we use cannot be glibly  reduced to tidy formulas. Ironically, it has been proven that the phrase he chose to illustrate his point can actually make perfect sense given the right context.

Koppel manages to bring meaning and poetry to the line. With a score composed by revered electronic musician  Richard D James aka the Aphex Twin. Koppell has written that music was a vital component from the outset. It should be noted that Richard James  admired the film but wasn't too enamored about the way his music was edited.  The abrupt cuts to Avril 14th, a track that is used as a repeated refrain throughout, are made because Koppel didn't want the music to be used as conventional soundtrack but needed it to denote “an accentuation of the emotional dynamics of drama”. He justifies the crude editing of the music by saying that  “throughout the film we are asking the audience to listen to the silence”. The lilting strains of Aphex Twins music works wonders on the soundtrack, as does the abrupt consistently surprising diting, which efforlessly transports the viewer from place to place, life to life.

The filmmaker spent nearly nine months back in his homestead where he was bought up observing the rituals and traditions of the inhabitants with his Super 16mm camera, although this is far from being a conventional documentary study: there’s no voice-over, there are very few ‘characters’, and the connections between the vignettes of everyday existence are rarely spelt out, the film simply asks audiences to observe and draw their own conclusions from the images of ordinary lives and the natural landscape.   .

The two most significant human figures turn out to be Koppel’s widowed mother Pip, and the kindly mobile librarian John Jones. A tiny, physically resilient individual, the animal loving Pip seems completely unaffected by the presence of the camera, whilst the monthly visit of John’s bright yellow van is a reminder of how important books can be in establishing a sense of community. Koppel frequently drops in on unnamed people who are absorbed by their work, whether it’s teaching, baking, sheep shearing, milking, repairing vehicles, ploughing, haymaking, or cabinet-making, ways of life that are slowly being crushed by the wheels of progress. And he juxtaposes these images of human toil with shots of the magnificent surrounding countryside, captured in different seasons, lights and weather conditions, showing the sheer beauty of my country.

Following the progress of a mobile library gives a framework to the film, this van is literally a vehicle of stories that takes us on a profound and poetic journey into a world of endings and beginnings, a world of stuffed owls, sheep and fire.If the film can be said to have a message or purpose it is to remind us how the notion of  ‘community’ should be viewed as something that affects people’s daily lives rather than as a political concept. One issue that unites the community of Trefeurig is the threat to the future of the village’s primary school and we see a meeting where the locals criticise the council’s short-sighted decision to close the school.

Change is inevitable but does not always bring improvements, something neatly encapsulated in a witty poem about replacing a wooden signpost with a metal one. The new one is sturdier yet proves unreliable whenever there’s a strong wind. Wood may rot but a least the indicators remain in the correct position.

The spectre of modernity is always present and means that you can’t watch this film without the sad reflection that the inevitable march of progress will sweep away the old traditions and values depicted.

Sleep Furiously preserves for posterity moments and memories that will fade in time. The lines that appear on-screen near the end of the film remind us of the limitations of language when it comes to articulating what this means in human terms : “It is only when I sense the end of things that I find the courage to speak. The courage, but not the words.”

Much influenced by his conversations with the writer Peter Handke , Koppel speaks, affectionately and lyrically, through his images, allowing us to see a disappearing word anew. The film never rests on teeness or sarcasm and as a result produces something altogether deeper, moodier, more compassionate and joyful. I would strongly recommend buying the DVD of this beautiful, moving patchwork quilt of a film that  has been so lovingly stitched .The DVD also includes a one hour pilot film called ‘A Sketchbook for The Library Van’ where, in a series of straight to camera monologues, the people talk about their lives. As in the main feature, the ordinary becomes extraordinary. A rich  artistic exploration of the dwindling flame of rural life, a profound moving  journey into a world of endings and beginnings. A film that has been described as " lyrical film making at its best". Avoid amazon it can be found in more ethical places.

By taking things deeper than face value and looking for alternative interpretations we can understand the world better around us. Not everyone views the world from the same lens, and something that may have no meaning to us, such as the sentence "colorless  green ideas sleep furiously." could have significance to someone who is able to look through a different lens. It is for me, what makes this wold we inhabit ever so richer. While winter reigns and the earth reposes allow colourless green ideas to sleep furiously.

sleep furiously film trailer