This Christmas is a very weird one and Facebook dug up this blogpost from the archives from 4 years ago. I miss those rich soliloquy’s and one-to-one dialogues from those days. They should bring them back. Especially now we are so often alone – I think that’s why Alan Bennet’s Talking Heads series was so poignant this year too. How often do we find we are talking to ourselves, growling at radio announcements, raging about Tweets about Trump, or sighing in despair about our government? I know I do it more often than I’d like. But these days are a hotbed of it and art of today needs to reflect that.
Re-reading the blogpost today I see how important it is in terms of critical analysis. It plays very much on composition, on light and religiosity. And my recent films have been considering those things too. It is amazing how the camera, the setting, the content can draw you into something very deeply, during very few seconds.
Back to Eastenders, I must say this current series is getting worse by the minute – but it won’t top me seeing what happens at Christmas! It strikes me that the Producer is borrowing methods from the Nordic thrillers – with drone shots, complex plotlines, corruption. I’m not sure it works as well as the references to the old masters did, but things change, and so must we, as audiences. And creatives.
Here’s the original writing, December 2016:
Christmas – I recently blogged about it, how I find it empty. As a closet Eastenders fan , I enjoy watching the build up to Christmas on the square. Impending doom, love, hate, violence and crisis usually thrown into the mix, along with a good sing-song in the Old Vic and a wedding, funeral or death.
Last night, on 16th December, there were subtle clues for sleuths; relationship shifts and twists, but the best part was the scene of Dot, alone, having not gone to the Nativity play. Sometimes these are the absolutely best moments in Easties – when the characters sit down, shut their Cockney mouths, and show us their inner thoughts by the means of classical lighting and staging. This shot is one of those old mistress/masters moments and I love it.
Most of the square are in church for the nativity play, and while the children sing Away in a Manger, there’s a cut to a slow pan towards Dot’s front door, then this view of her. It lasts for 16 seconds, the sound track continues and the shot ends when the song does, and returns to the church.
The out of focus corner of the wood panelling on the left, the subdued midnight blue of the cardigan, the deep dye red hair of the hag-like face in contemplation; the upright spine of Christianity; the candle, light of the world, and God; the still life of fruit, Christingle exotic orange, symbol of the world and worldliness; ribbons for gifts, empty chair of an absent friend; string bag hanging on door, empty, no longer used; shiny brass door knob, polished, with care; in the right foreground something brassy – a lamp maybe? Definitely not Ikea. In the shadows, whatever it is still gleams, slightly, as old things do. As does Dot. Excellent chiaroscuro.
It could be about loneliness at Christmas, or a fading flickering light of the square about to expire. There’s a sense of imminence, but we don’t know what yet is going to happen. It doesn’t bear thinking about really. Dot is the Walford matriarch, we see that when after the service lots of friends and family, having noted her absence, stream into her house with jollity and love.
This one episode was the frame for this image, this narrative, this moment.
It does what a good artwork does, it holds a thought, incorporates a huge bundle of signifiers. It is both minute in scale and monumental. And very beautiful.
Carolyn Black 