THE POSSIBILITIES ARE ENDLESS (2014)

I have been putting off watching The Possibilities are Endless as I have done a lot of other texts that I have been inspired by preferring to have by slightly foggy memories of them so as not to be too influenced. However I did watch the documentary again today to re-visit the techniques it employs and the mood, tone, and highly emotive atmosphere it manages to create to remind myself and see if I can use these or put a spin on them for my own work.

The film is a fusion of high art and delicate storytelling about the rehabilitation of Scottish singer Edwyn Collins after a life threatening stroke. It is hugely creative and innovative aurally and visually as well as being inspirational, never taking the obvious tabloid documentary route. There are no standard talking head interviews and Edwyn’s voiceover is collaged from a huge wealth of audio recordings made at all stages of his recovery from very stuttery beginnings to more regular speech.

Watching the film again inspired me to do some further research into it. Film critic Dave Voight summed the film up thus “rather than craft a film of talking head confessionals and moments in the hospital, we get a mostly faceless voiceover set to some stunning imagery and unique archival footage designed to illustrate mindset of someone trying to find their way back to a normal existence.” Edward Lovelace one of the directors commented in an interview “we figured if we could get Edwyn’s voice to narrative a story about his life, then we could just create our visual tapestry.”

I was lucky enough to meet Edwyn Collins and his wife Grace after a festival that was screening a film of mine as well as theirs. Meeting in bar over a few too many beers I asked about why they chose Hall and Lovelace to tell their story when plenty of other filmmakers also wanted to tell Edwin’s story Edwin answered “because they wanted to make a piece of film art first and a documentary second”.

The film is gorgeous to look at and incredibly brave as we do not see anything really resembling traditional documentary until 20 minutes in. The first 20 minutes is a collage of image and soundscapes of inside Edwyn's head reimagining the massive stroke he went through. The images throughout paint a picture in an often very avant garde manner of the themes of the story. there is no talking head but Edwyns voice and that of his wife Grace areour guides throughout. The symbolism of the images, place, rememberances, locations is ever present. An element that works surprisingly well are the key scenes re-enacted by Edwyns son and an actress of Edwyn and his wife getting together. Rather than do re-creations of the late 70's though they are shot in contemporary settings and seem to have even more impact and less sentimentality as a result.

However the film is absolutely not style over substance. Edwyns story and struggle, amazing relationship with his wife are captivating and tenderly dealt with throughout. The narrative and character shine through but not conventionally and are never tabloidesque or mawkish. There are loads of styles, techniques and elements to take from the film that can be utilised for my own "Poetic Love" documentary with my grandmother especially the lack of talking head and the clever and emotive use of image and sound as well as the poetic documentary style.