The first part of Patrick Keiller’s trilogy, an attempt to address the "problem of London", begins just before the 1992 re-election of John Major. It’s a pseudo documentary ostensibly narrated by an acquaintance of one Robinson, a part-time art lecturer at the University of Barking. Nearly 20 years on, not much has changed – we’re in a place of bombings and bomb threats, with chaotic, privatised public transport. It’s a once civil society stretched to breaking point.
Paul Scofield’s arch commentary is so mellifluous that you’re willing to believe everything he says. Is there really a tunnel under the Thames linking MI5 and MI6? Were World War Two stretchers used to create park railings? I found myself wondering about the filming process – exactly how Keiller’s camera was rendered seemingly invisible, most passers-by oblivious to it.
London is not entirely downbeat. The screenplay is witty and the city is not entirely past hope - the anarchy and colour that gives the place its energy is found in places like Brixton or the Notting Hill Carnival. And the images are wonderful, my favourite being an anonymous row of terraces near Heathrow suddenly dwarfed by an incoming Concorde.
London is being issued on DVD with 1997's Robinson in Space. Five years on, the latter casts its net wider - it's a fictional journey tackling "the problem of England". Scofield again narrates, and the technique is the same – mostly static camera shots with which Keiller makes the mundane seem impossibly strange and exotic. It’s all immensely melancholy, despite the wit – a requiem for a nation with an economy based on manufacturing rather than service industries, where shopping centres bleed dry the communities they’re meant to serve. The few factories that we see produce latex sheets, leg irons and handcuffs.
Last year's Robinson in Ruins (issued separately) takes place in a similarly depopulated landscape, set against the background of the 2008 financial crisis. We’re meant to be watching film shot by the now missing Robinson, found in a derelict caravan. The results aren’t as consistently successful; Vanessa Redgrave’s narration can’t match Scofield’s quizzical warmth and the piece feels over long. But the images are as striking as ever, whether of lichen growing on a road sign or a spider diligently spinning a web as Redgrave describes the unravelling of the global economy. A nice DVD feature is the ability to turn the commentary off, leaving one with nothing but birdsong and distant traffic noise.
Watch the trailer for Robinson in Ruins
