Swandown
Directed by: Andrew Kotting
2012
Swandown’s choice of travel may be unlikely, but it delivers surprisingly beautiful landscapes and unusual funny moments.
Director Andrew Kotting and writer Ian Sinclair decide to set free a swan-shaped pedalo. They will travel on it from the windy sea of Hastings, through the quite canals of the inlands, until the dirty water of the Thames in London, destination: the Olympic Park. Filming themselves, being filmed and filming others, Kotting and Sinclair embark on a trip the ridiculousness of which they soon transform into charm, wit and poetry.
Although we watch Kotting and Sinclair proceed day by day, following their journey on a map, the documentary itself seems to be less about the travel than about what the travel inspired them to think, perceive or remember. The editing is a kaleidoscopic juxtaposition of archive footage, straightforward documentation, spoken thoughts and poetry, imaginary visions, beautiful images and bizarre encounters. The ride on a fake swan is only the sparkle that triggers what matters. One is reminded of a Bergson’s line: le temps est invention, ou il est rien du tout (time is invention, or it is nothing at all).
By choosing a pedalo, Kotting and Sinclair decided to slow down and amplify the time of travel to the length of a slow stroll on (and sometimes in) water. Swandown seems to be part of a recently rediscovered fascination with creativity, and journeys on foot whose destination simply marks the end of the story. Just a few months ago, W.G. Sebald’s walks in The Rings of Saturn were retraced in the documentary Patience (After Sebald), and this month The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot by Robert Macfarlane was published, rediscovering old traveling routes across the nation. Swandown, however, remains the work of a cinematographer: less concerned with the functioning of the creative mind travelling on foot, than with the surprise of images raising out of luck and unexpected landscape.
What these works share, however, is a growing desire to recover the lost inland countryside of Britain. Along their journey on the swan-shaped pedalo, Kotting and Sinclair traverse beautiful scenes, unreachable any other way than by water. Ridiculous as it may seem, their travel opens the viewer’s eyes onto a new perspective on England's rich inlands. After having traveled among small and untouched canals and fields, the Olympic Park at the end appears as a bleak, industrial monster, whose entrance is forbidden and whose waters are polluted and unwelcoming.
Whether you want to break out into the world from the wobbling platform of a swan-shaped pedalo, or whether you simply want to follow the ridiculous journey of two travelers with no qualms, Swandown will carry you faster than its trip unfolds.
fiamma
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