Patrick Keiller's companion piece to his critically-acclaimed London
captures that particular Englishness beloved by the chattering classes. Rather like
a Radio 4 play with pictures, it is a wonderfully erudite and amusingly anecdotal
study charting the increasingly unknown space of present-day England. Its narrator
is Paul Schofield whose character emerges as a latter day Boswell to Robinson's Johnson.
Robinson in Space picks up where London left off. Robinson,
now teaching in reduced circumstances at a language school in Reading, is invited by a
well-known advertising agency to undertake a study of the "problem" of England.
Robinson is interested in the way things look. He quotes Oscar Wilde: "It is only
shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The true mystery of the world is
the visible, not the invisible..." During his tour, Robinson visits factories, ports,
distribution estates and heritage sites examining English anachronisms, culture,
dilapidation and industrial economy. His digressions and insights are constantly
juxtaposed with the images on screen, resulting in wry whimsy delivered with deadpan
economy: "The only company in the world that makes latex sheeting suitable
for fetishwear," he informs us, "is based in Derbyshire."
As Robinson's behaviour becomes increasingly unpredictable, the picture building up of
England becomes ever more fractured and Kafkaesque. What ultimately emerges is an
extraordinary and thought-provoking film essay.
Reviewed by Monika Maurer
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