Reel Art is an Arts Council initiative that awards funding to two experimental documentaries each year. Further Beyond, the Reel Art commission from film duo, Desperate Optimists (Christine Molloy & Joe Lawlor), screened at the IFI in February as part of DIFF. I spoke to Joe, one half of the duo, about the film. Further Beyond intertwines the stories of two people whose journeys between Ireland and the Americas shaped their lives. Its primary subject, Ambrose (later Ambrosio) O’Higgins, was an 18th century tenant farmer who emigrated to South America, served as Governor of Chile, and later as Viceroy of Peru. The secondary protagonist, Helen, is the mother of Joe Lawlor. She came to Ireland alone as a child, and returned to New York as a young woman. Their stories, while remarkable, echo a familiar Irish narrative of emigration.
The directors’ playful use of voice-over and reenactment brings humour and warmth to what could have been a dry historical documentary. Joe explained that while initially they wanted to “become as knowledgeable as [they] could about Ambrose O’Higgins”, they quickly turned away from that fact-driven approach. “We found ourselves in Trinity college, meeting an academic who’s well known for his knowledge and expertise on 18th century history, and we started to think, are we really interested in knowing something factual? What is more interesting is the interpretation of facts. It’s the interpretations that count, culturally.”
This approach, wherein the filmmakers focus on speculation and imaginative reconstruction rather than exposition, makes for a documentary that feels unusually democratic. As an audience member, you feel like the stories you’re being told are open for interpretation and discussion; there is no sense that you’re getting an expert insight into the realities of the situation. “If you go down that road [the factual one], you will barely scratch the surface – you’re not an expert, and there will always be people who have way more knowledge than you. It’s the psychological space that we’re really interested in, and of course, there are no experts on that one,” says Joe. “The need for speculation is compounded when the characters are lost to us. So you end up having more fun with completely trite lines like “Ambrose O’Higgins was thinking what a drag all this is,” than trying to explain the details of post-Cromwell Ireland. We didn’t want to be experts; we wanted to highlight our amateurness about it all, frankly.” This sentiment influenced the subject matter, as Christine and Joe opted to explore the early, undocumented part of Ambrose’s life, from his birth to his arrival in Chile, rather than the details of his political career. “Once you get into the second part [of his life], then he’s playing his life out on a big canvas, and everybody’s watching. He has travelled, he’s there, and we weren’t interested in that. There is less space to project into.”
This perspective is especially interesting considering that one of the subjects, Helen, is Joe’s mother. “There are parts of your parents’ lives that are closed off. You have to try and imagine the life they had before you were born, and who they were, and what shaped them; and they might not remember those things. So you have to look at the artefacts you have, photographs for example.” In the course of the documentary, voice-over artists Alan Howley and Denise Gough, acting as stand-ins for directors Christine and Joe, meditate on old photographs and try to imagine the thoughts and feelings of those in them. “You have to invest yourself in photographs and the stories they might tell. Who knows what Helen was actually thinking [when she arrived alone in New York]? That’s always up for grabs, ultimately. It’s kind of interesting, the process by which that sense of family history gets owned.”
The journeys of Ambrose and Helen are recreated by Joe, who filmed at all of the locations with a “little, inexpensive, relatively simple camera,” with stunning results. The Irish countryside, the rooftops of Cadiz, the peaks of the Andes, and the skyscrapers of New York, each contribute their idiosyncratic vistas. Joe explains that including the genuine locations in the film was very important to them. “I think showing the actual Empire State building, going to the actual church that Ambrose went to, visiting Helen’s actual farm – that’s quite powerful. The audience can, visually and psychologically, go on Ambrose and Helen’s journeys. Visiting them brings to light things about how their physical locations affected their circumstances. When I visited Chile, there was no snow, because of global warming. Chile’s political climate would have been very different if we had global warming 200 years ago. The most important thing Ambrose did as an engineer, was to build nine weatherproof shelters on the mountain pass between Argentina and Chile. If that hadn’t happened, his life wouldn’t have been the same. It can be a bit creepy, retracing their steps, like in the scenes where we visit the farm Helen grew up on, but I hope people aren’t purely thinking of her, but of something to do with themselves. That’s one of the great things about cinema – it brings you to places. You don’t have to add much more for it to become quite evocative. Of course literature can do that as well, but there’s an immediacy about what the camera can do”.
This focus on place is important to Desperate Optimists’ writing process. “The starting point for writing, nearly every time, is to pick a place and wait for – What’s that expression? – the ideas to leap and stumble across the stage.” This approach to writing influences how they construct the psychological space of the characters they investigate. Throughout Further Beyond, the focus is on the effects of physical space on Ambrose and Helen’s experience, rather than on the details of their inner lives. “If you think about what actors do, they don a persona; they put on the right shoes, immediately changing the way they walk, and how they feel about themselves. Physical objects bring transformational qualities. If we had tried to talk as if we were Helen or Ambrose, in the first person, that would have been presumptuous. Rather, we wanted to physically place somebody in a particular environment, wearing a particular set of clothes, knowing that this particular reality is impending upon them, and from that condition, speculate as to what the psychology might be like.” Joe mentions that this sentiment is echoed in William Carlos Williams’ quote “No ideas but in things”, which he thinks expresses something worth keeping in mind as a writer. “The advice is to let the ideas happen in the space between the things that you’re writing about, and avoid trying to pin down things which are ultimately abstract. You’re hanging on to these things, and from that then what? And even if you don’t affect the feeling – at least you’ve drawn the context.”
Having worked extensively within the drama format before, Joe is positive about the opportunities the documentary format offers for formal experimentation. “Documentary is infinitely easier to play with the form of than drama. Drama is an amazingly conservative form. It’s meant to guarantee a particular emotional experience, with comedy, light, shade, a three-act structure. With drama, there’s bigger money, but there are more demands placed on the recipient. Documentary money is small money, with much less demands. I think you’re duty bound to play around with it.” This attitude is certainly reflected in Further Beyond, which incorporates into its structure extensive reflection on the film-making process, humorously contrived behind-the-scenes footage, and a surprise cameo from Aidan Gillen. At the Q & A after the show in the IFI, Christine and Joe remarked that their focus was fifty percent on story, and fifty percent on form. “If you think of The Act of Killing – there’s a big, solid story, and there’s lots of typical ways of telling it, but the director chose a very untypical way of telling it, with no loss of power. The only reason really to listen to music, read a novel, or go to the cinema is for the form. These are forms. It’s not about the content. What are you gonna learn in terms of pure content? Probably not a lot that you didn’t know anyway. It’s how that content is expressed that’s powerful.”
Experimenting with form can bring with it accusations of pretension, something Joe thinks is particularly prevalent amongst Irish critics. “There’s something about the Irish psyche where they hate the idea of pretension, they think that you’re trying to make fools of them, that you’re not sincere. None of these critics ever make anything – why would I spend years of my life creating something, just to take the piss? The one thing you should never doubt is the integrity of the artist. That gets called into question time and time again, and it drives me nuts.”
Further Beyond will have screenings in the UK from July, at Home in Manchester, Curzon Bloomsbury in London, and the Watershed in Bristol. Christine and Joe are in conversation with a cinema in Dublin about a run of Further Beyond, so keep an eye out on Desperate Optimists’ Facebook page for updates. To see some past work, check out vimeo.com/desperateoptimists.
