The Arbor

Saw The Arbor, a very strange, stage-y film. It's a sort-of-documentary about the playwright Adrea Dunbar (I've read nothing by her. I read a lot of plays.) Real people were interviewed and then their interviews were lip-synched by actors. It's very unusual for a film. This sort of thing is usually used for documentary-ish plays, such as the Laramie Project. To see it in a film adds a strong layer of artificiality between the viewer and the subject. Dunbar's plays largely mirror her life, taking place in a Yorkshire housing estate known as "The Arbor," a rough place full of loud, drunken people, where cops are not an unusual sight. The film includes selections of her plays, preformed in the plastic-bag-strewn "green" of the estate, presumably ringed by inhabitants. We have performances within performances here, people. The high wire is pulled tight indeed.

The film opens on an anecdote told by Dunbar's daughters about a time when they were locked inside of their room which they had accidentally set on fire. They tried to get out, but the door had no doorknob on the inside. From this anxious beginning, we rock through Dunbar's tumultuous life. We hear of her exploitation at the hands of various men far her senior and her spiral into alcoholism. And then, halfway through, the film oddly shifts focus onto the life of her daughter, a half-Pakistani girl. The daughter tells us of sexual abuse and racism (even from her mother, who called her a "golliwog.") The daughter shares her own intimate and sordid tale of drugs, prostitution, reaction to her mother and life in her mother's shadow.

The film includes excerpts from BBC specials on the mother. These specials have a kind of leering, exploitative feel to them. They focus on her squalid home life and tumultuous romances, ogling her disasters more than her triumphs. The film itself does not entirely escape this exploitative feel. The shift from the mother to the daughter seems inexplicable, save for a bloodhound-like following of the drama. Dunbar had other, more stable (and therefore less luridly fascinating) children. They are given roles only to illuminate the behavior of the troubled daughter. We are told that there was a follow-up play written after Dunbar's death about how her family and friends had changed. The daughter's statements, as repeated in the play, inflame and incense her relatives. The theater society, it seems, cannot stop fanning the flames of this woman's life. It would be depressing if this film were not perpetuating the drama-airing. As it is, the film is kind of frustrating if I think about it too hard.

Overall, the film is fascinating. The COPS-level stories of sex and drugs are mesmerizing, if a bit exploitative. The hall-of-mirrors performances-within-performances lead to all kinds of critique about the nature of art and commentary. The gloriously bellow-y Yorkshire accents are great. The film is totally fascinating and only slightly discomforting. My pretentious discomfort aside, the film is quite good. I enjoyed watching it.