![]() ![]() ![]() The Afterlife - Faith and Doubt: Lent 2021, Day 15.This planet, my home now and for the future: Lent.Karma - social control, or something more? Lent 20.Pleasure - put it off, or have it now? Lent 2021.Where are you really from? Lent 2021: Day 21.Muscle memory, mindfulness and metaphysics: Lent 2.Near-death experiences - do they tell us anything.Reconciling science and spirituality: Lent 2021, D.Physical immortality: Lent 2021, Day 26.Consciousness in other creatures: Lent 2021, Day 27.Higher life forms, imagined: Lent 2021, Day 28.The ups and down of life: Lent 2021, Day 29.Connecting with the Metaphysical: Lent 2021, Day 33.The Ecstasy of Wilko Johnson: Lent 2021, Day 34.The metaphysics of coincidence: Lent 2021, Day 35.One life is not enough: Lent 2021, Day 36.Glimpses into past lives? Lent 2021, Day 37.Will we ever understand what's inside the atom? Le.Medicine, mindfulness and miracles: Lent 2021, Day 40.The Holiest of Holies: Lent 2021, Day 41.Actively seeking Understanding: Lent 2021, Day 42.The Devil is doubt - or does doubt drive curiosity.And as I watched it, I thought that it was no coincidence that serendipity brought this film to my notice during this Lent. It encapsulates the Glory of Being Alive. If your time is short, please spend just one minute and 12 seconds of your life watching from 04:00 to 05:12. It's full-length feature, but it is worth every minute of your time watching something as deeply moving as this. The unique atmosphere of the refinery island, lying below sea level, vulnerable to flooding yet a pleasure destination for the East End, is beautifully captured. Much of the film is shot in Canvey Island, a place that drew me there many times as a young man to photograph it in black and white. And of course, Bergman's Seventh Seal, overarching the whole film, with Wilko as the mediaeval knight playing chess against Death - also played by himself. References like this are close to home, they feel to me like a justification that I've been searching in the right places. Blind Willie Johnson's Dark was the Night, Cold was the Ground, Thomas Tallis's Spem in Alium, Ralph Vaughan Williams' Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, Interstellar Overdrive by Pink Floyd, William Wordsworth's The Daffodils and Hamlet's 'to sleep, perchance to dream, aye, there's the rub', clips from Tarkovsky's Stalkerand Eduard Artemyev's haunting soundtrack to that film. The film intersected with music, film and literature that feature in my canon. Painful memories that throw into relief the notions of human loneliness, togetherness and solitude. In a particularly moving part of the film, Wilko recounts the death from cancer, ten years earlier, of his childhood sweetheart and wife of 40 years, Irene. I can't help thinking that Wilko is an old soul - what else would draw a young man from a working-class home in Canvey Island to make it through to university to study ancient Icelandic? It is clear to me at least that this extremely well-read man has a passion for times past that suggests some kind of a spiritual, metaphysical, supernatural connection with History, across History. It is clear that he is an intelligent and mindful human being, observant, sensitive to the Universe (literally - he is an amateur astronomer), There is no sadness, no self-pity Wilko radiates a sense of a man who has lived a life that fulfilled his human potential. This sharpens his senses, his experience of the here and now he begins to notice the everyday, the commonplace, and find beauty in it. Being an atheist, he dismisses hope in any conscious life after bodily death. Faced with the prospect of death, Wilko Johnson resigns himself to eternal oblivion. The resulting film is a work of wonder, of joy, of profound philosophical importance. On hearing of Wilko's diagnosis and imminent demise, Temple set out to document the final months of the guitarist's life. Temple's directorial debut was the Sex Pistols' The Great Rock'n'Roll Swindle (1980) in 2009 he directed a documentary about Dr Feelgood, Oil City Confidential*. The result is director Julien Temple's The Ecstasy of Wilko Johnson (2015). He decides to forego treatment and face his last months in the presence of a film camera. In January 2014, 66-year-old Wilko Johnson, former guitarist with legendary pub-rock band Dr Feelgood, is told by a doctor that he has pancreatic cancer and 10 months to live. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |