Hi Rupert,
I like what you say about Gideon's Daughter -
>Poliakoff's intention is to stop TV time (and real time) - to make us look
>and think - and to take on our pasts for the future. The terrible empty
>shell of the Millenium Dome became a literal shell for the protagonist.
- as I think I detect this in 'TV Metaphysical' Poliakoff's previous
productions too - always one place becomes a shifting zone of resonance, as
it were - the extended party in Friends & Crocodiles, the royal gardens of
The Lost Prince, the dusty rooms of the archive in Shooting the Past, and of
course it begins with the trans-European train in Caught on a Train - each
time the location stops linear time, or linear time chokes up, and we get an
*atmosphere of time deferred, where (often eccentric?) characters must try
to save something from the past in order to live in the future (Gideon's
Daughter was the title and the very centre of this concern here, but the
idea is underlined in all of his productions, what must be saved is human
memory in Shooting, what must be the future is geo-political grief in The
Lost Prince) - so what we see is the characters trying to actively fracture
in two directions (or "fork" as Bergson would say) back and forward - that's
my take on why they "disappear" at the end of this new one - they've forked
out of TV time - but anyway -
I enjoyed watching Gideon's Daughter!
Best,
Edmund
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