Robinson in Space (1997)

directed by Patrick Keiller
UK
78 minutes
4 stars
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Watching this made me think about something I'd never thought of before: The line past which a documentary becomes an experimental film and vice versa. There's a lot of movies that belong solidly to the experimental canon that are, in reality, just shots of various scenery- I think about Dog Star Man, Stemple Pass, Russian Ark, Water and Power, and basically whatever is generally considered to be "classic" in terms of experimental cinema, and it occurs to me that all of these share much the same quality as Robinson in Space: Static shots of a number of things, no onscreen interference from actors or a director, yet somewhat of an "agenda" in its production nonetheless.

I guess the thing that could be said to set Robinson in Space apart from classic avant-garde cinema is the presence of a fully articulated narration, but seeing as we don't see either the narrator or his... friend? colleague? lover? Robinson at any point in the film, and seeing as the camera doesn't move much and just gives us static shots of different places around England, it can barely be said that this is any kind of documentary at all. I believe this was shown on TV when it was released, which is interesting because public-access television is not the first place I'd turn to for explorations of the further reaches of documentary filmmaking.

That agenda that I spoke about comes in the form of the narrator relating how his and Robinson's faceless, mysterious employer instructed them to make a documentary on "the problem of England". What this problem is is never directly touched upon, nor is it even mentioned beyond the narrator making clear what his motivation for the film was in the very beginning.

Whatever its intent, it's an interesting look at a modern-day England (though it is 20 years ago by now) that's bulldozed, paved, fenced off, and stuffed to bursting with smog, slag, coal, steel, garbage, and other byproducts of society. The problem of England could be interpreted as actually being England itself- where demand increases rapidly and is supplied by unclean fuel, cheap materials imported from overseas, and destruction of the environment. Politics comes into play only very infrequently but it would appear that this documentary is not entirely happy with the state of England as it's shown within.