Liverpool

To be released on August 22nd, 2011.

This is available on watch instant netflix now as well.

According to Amazon, this has been delayed until January.

Bounced over to February according to Amazon.

The new release date at Amazon is the correct one - 23rd January 2012.

Final artwork:

If the mention on Mubi is accurate, the inclusion of the Letter to Serra short is good news indeed. Extra glad I finally put in my preorder.

Found confirmation of Letter to Serra's inclusion. More than happy to have a second copy of this short (it also being in Intermedio's Correspondences set), as I'm completely in love with it. My somewhat scattershot thoughts:

Wind picks up as the camera drifts forward. What are we looking for, what are we pursuing? Easy to forget he shoots on film. The past brought into the present, using nothing but a simple reveal. Use of the land; one mans playground is another’s workplace. Distressed avian. Touch of Straub. The reader commands the camera. He walks forward, pushing it back. Once he has taken control of the space, he steps back to do his recitation. When he's finished, he commands the subjects, hiding just out of sight, all around the frame of the earlier portion of the film to follow him. The camera does the same; the viewer has become one of the subjects. The past recedes. The camera stays back, waiting for whatever’s to come.

Full details are not at our website quite as yet but here are some of the confirmed details for you. Hope you will like the package we have put together for this wonderful film.

Full details of the Liverpool release now up at our website: http://www.secondrundvd.com/release_liverpool.php

I also saw the short as part of the Correspondences project, and whilst I did like a few of the other pieces, my clear favourite was the Alonso short, which meant I didn't want to pick up the whole of that set. I was very pleased to see Second Run include this short on the disc, and even though I already own the Kino edition of Liverpool, the second run is a much better release as a whole. It was worth £7.50 for the Untitled Serra letter alone. I've yet to watch the Alonso document, but this is the most extensive release of an Alonso film to date, as most are usually non anamorphic with unsubbed extras. I may even like the short as much as Liverpool itself.

Thanks to Second Run for this great release!

The Digital Fix.

Mondo Digital.

Spoilers:

After watching the film I'm happily left with more questions than definitive answers. Is the main character Farrel narcoleptic, given that we see him being awakened from a nap in the ship's engine room and that at a couple of points during his journey at exciting or confrontational moments the film fades out. Such as from Farrel at the strip club to awakening in the derelict van; or the scene where he is spying through the window on his daughter Analía to the next scene opening with him asleep in a shed open to the elements from which he is dragged into his family home half frozen (or is that the only way he would be briefly accepted back into the home, or be able to make contact?)

Is Farrel an alcoholic, or is the bottle that he regularly takes a drink from on his journey just a way of keeping warm (or a way of preparing himself to meet his family again)? The bottle itself empties at the point that Farrel is asleep in the shed just before he gets taken into the family home, which perhaps suggests more that this is alcohol taken in preparation for a difficult meeting.

Is the daughter mentally impaired in some way, or just standoffish? (Is that why the man who lives with the daughter and Farrel's mother complains "look at the legacy you have left me with"?) Or is this just an effect of living in an incredibly isolated area of the world? She does not really make contact with anyone, particularly blanking Farrel and then once Farrel disappears from the film near the end, also seeming to not make contact with the young man in the canteen who also then calls out to her in the snow later on.

The disappearance of Farrel striding off into the distance near the end is a great, slightly Antonioni-esque moment (though Antonioni characters either never turn up or suddenly disappear without trace, rather than purposefully walk off!), and one which the Second Run disc artwork in particular did not lead me to suspect with its 'there and back' footsteps suggesting we would follow Farrel on his return journey too, something which never happens as Farrel walks off, in a sense abandoning the film as much as he has his family while we are left to deal with our own issues of whether that abandonment was such a bad thing or not! Is Farrel going back to the ship or not? (Maybe not given that he packs a big black bag to leave the ship, then hides it behind some wood and takes the smaller red bag for his trip instead. Or is that just something he does in case he does not get back to the ship in time in order to not lose all of his stuff if it sails without him?)

So many elements are left open to audience interpretation. For example the 'Liverpool' key ring. Is this a final parting gift from a man who is both rejecting and rejected by his family after a final meeting in which duty is done but communication still impossible? Or is this just an ill thought out gift? A novelty trinket from a distant land? Useless in an environment in which it doesn't belong any more, thereby perfectly standing in for Farrel (and perhaps his daughter as well).

I like the idea expressed in the booklet essay that this is kind of a Western film, perhaps something like The Searchers, in which the main character takes a long journey to reach home, or perform a quest to fulfil obligations to an old life, only to find that they have been away so long that they do not belong there either.

I also particularly like the way that the scenes of Farrel and the other characters at work on the ship at the start of the film make a very effective bookend with the scenes of Analía tagging along while the older man is out hunting at the end, suggestive of a correlation between these two modes of keeping daily life going, rural hunting and industrial shipping, even if there is a wasteland or barren country separating them from each other. There's an isolation to be had whilst out in the wilderness or at sea which is punctuated with rather perfunctory conversations, or awkward silences on their return to 'civilisation'. Perhaps that suggests that while Farrel wanted to escape that stifling town (as suggested in the booklet essay, as well as by his hasty departure), he still ended up gravitating towards a similar style of life.