Sleep Furiously (2008) User Reviews

Two films

[oOgiandujaOo_and_Eddy_Merckx · 7/10 · 15 July 2009]

After this film I struggled to collect my thoughts, and that's because really I felt like I had been watching two films, one a banal parochial documentary about decrepit ways of living in the sticks, and the other a mannered appreciation of Welsh landscape. The film for me is a conflation, how to square on one hand seeing time lapse photography of a baby sleeping, then a pulsating tarn with a dark and bizarre copse of trees in the middle of a wasteland, and on the other senile conversations about next to nothing, too hellish for Beckett to contemplate. There's no narration so as a viewer I was left with little context.

The artist has a personal vision of a place which in my opinion he is trying to conflate into something universal to a community. His photography of an auction of farm items is beautiful and baroque, and yet to the people at the auction, that's not what they're seeing at all, they see function not form. Gideon Koppel's images feel to me like those of an outsider. Two authentic movies seem to me to jar together and produce something more confused.

There are many beautiful images in Sleep Furiously, my favourites are a time lapse of a pair of tautly billowing curtains and a piece of glistening spider web by a collapsed curtain rail. Quite what to make of the non-experimental elements is difficult, are we seeing an elegy, or is what is being lost nothing to mourn at all, a vegetable lifestyle thrown back from more religious days when folks would read The Pilgrim's Progress and conclude that the pathway to heaven was accessed via drudgery?

The Welsh "Etre et Revoir"?

[tim-764-291856 · 8/10 · 25 January 2013]

Well, not really, but when we see the primary school class scenes, near the start, that is what immediately struck me and I'm sure anyone who's also seen and enjoyed the phenomenally popular and successful charting of a year of a French primary school and their teacher will know what I'm saying. Those who haven't - and enjoyed this, should check it out - directed by Nicolas Philibert, released 2002 and is sometimes known by its less elegant English translation 'To Be and To Have'.

Now that I've established that Sleep Furiously isn't just about the primary school (but its importance resonates throughout) I agree with nearly all the comments from reviewers, from the positive to the critical. I can see why the young Welsh couple found it clunky and boring and casting a backwards look on their country-folk yet I can see it for what it is. I too, find it distasteful and mocking for comfortable people to see 'twee folk doing what comes naturally and jolly good luck to them' - as they open another bottle of wine.

The reasons why I was attracted to buying, almost blind, except for reviews here and the advert, is because I'm an Englishman who lived and worked in Wales for a good portion of my adult life and for a time, dealt with agricultural policy. Very low down the ladder, I must add. I was also brought up on a farm myself. But mainly, because I'm very familiar with south Wales and re-visit regularly and with images of north Wales so prevalent in the touristy media (and now having taken up my hobby as photographer as part-time job) it's the oft forgotten 'middle-bit' of Wales that I've seen almost nothing of.

Yet, of course, it is the main farming area and mention is made of the Royal Welsh Show (which I have been to) which is held near Builth Wells, in Mid Wales - not north or south, where more people could visit and make it more commercial but where the heart of the real country is.

Yet, for all the predictability there is around people baking cakes and choosing books at the mobile library (I recall those in my childhood - and I'm mid 40's, so not THAT old!) it is the anticipation of what it is that comes next. Yes, you could fall asleep and no-one would really blame you but it also will bring down your blood pressure and I've always found Welsh used as everyday language, actually rather lovely, if that doesn't sound too patronising and how, with no obvious reason, English will be used instead, despite it being the same speakers and subject!

It obviously hasn't found an audience as wide or large as To Be and to Have (which has been shown on BBC4) and it'd be futile to try and work out why and why not. For a moment I wondered if this was a vanity project by the director but I'm sure you'll see why I soon dropped this idea!

I enjoyed the few time-lapsed sections probably the most - the curtains gently billowing in the breeze was sublime and the people with the fireworks, complete with a burst of the atmospheric electronic music, wonderful.

Whilst not the bravest, nor the most cutting edge of even engaging documentary ever made, it is certainly good and I'm now looking forward to watching it with my 80 year old father and his sister over Christmas. He has always enjoyed nature programmes - and One Man and His Dog - plus attractive country scenery and the pace will suit them both to a tee. And as an old pig farmer, the sights and sounds of the piglets being born will be special, too, I'm sure.

Meditation & reflection can't be hurried . . .

[mic_mac · 9/10 · 21 June 2009]

I loved this film - I loved the slow pace of it, the meditative quality, the way it reflected the quieter slower rate at which village & agricultural life turns.

The space & time devoted to "little happening" was perfect for me - especially when it was showing the beauty of the Welsh landscape.

The simplicity & honesty of the tales, allowed to naturally come across was beautiful & reminded me of David Lynch's "Straight Story".

The way that the village, community & the surrounding agriculture seemed ancient, only moving with the seasons was deftly shown. Poignantly, simultaneously the film also showed it was worryingly at imminent risk of losing some of its essential aspects.

If you can't sit still for 5 minutes & enjoy a setting sun, running river or rolling hillside, if you can't remain quiet & enjoy the silence, then this film's probably not for you. I'm afraid there isn't even a single car chase (only a brief sheep chase).

For everyone else, turn down the revs & sink into this low-key masterpiece. ______________

Update after Celia's comments - I don't understand why everything needs to have some perfectly realised & resolved answer - life's not like this, sometimes we never find out what happens, and sometimes our lives are simply enriched by inexplicable yet beautiful things (like this film).

This is the sort of film that is a soft target for accusations of "pretension" (or Celia's "Emperor's New Clothes") but there really is no pretence/pretension that this is going to be a normal A->B->C narrative, it's just not what it is. It's broadly filmed as documentary, but not a prescriptive one. What it is to me at least is a beautifully shot vignette, with snapshots, snippets & moments of many lives and stories, none of which does it try to fully provide a resolution.

Yes I've got questions I'd like answered (my friend wondered did the librarian ever use the laptop for anything more than a place to stamp the books?) but I don't expect to get the answers from the film itself, and that's OK by me.

The closest thing I've seen to it is the Patrick Keiller masterpieces "London" & "Robinson In Space" yet they are scripted, narrated & very thought out mixing esoteric elements of art, history, poetry, economics trivia and wit, all together again with great photography. The simpler more natural (no commentary, no sign of a behind-camera interviewer) version perhaps makes for a less focused film, but also one I just allowed myself to go with its slow, winding, meditative pace.

Wake Up And See This Gem

[p-mingard · 4 August 2009]

This is not a film for either Hollywood or YouTube. It takes all the time it needs to show you something and it does it with empathy and an understanding that only an insider has. On the surface, seen in long shots of valley and landscape, little happens and change is as slow as the seasons. Beneath that surface, shown in close-ups of the community, especially the visits of the library van, there is a lot going on in all their lives.

The title might easily refer to the silent desperation of rural dwellers whose communities are being stripped of their assets as families, pubs, schools, shops and public transport disappear in a hopeless struggle with urbanisation and the 'free' market. Or whose industries are not valued by a society that, even in reviews of this film, sees only the surface of life outside the all consuming metropolis. It could equally refer to the string of events that pass beneath the radar of most visitors to the countryside, the social life that glues communities together, the cycles of birth, productive life and death that applies to animals as well as people.

Sure it is beautifully shot and that may bewilder those who can only equate realism with grime, dark shadows and a limited colour palette. If you need a back story to understand what is going on, or the director to hold up prompts for your emotional response, this movie is not for you.

Here there are almost two films going on, one within the dialogue and music, another inside the visuals. We often hear the speaker long before they appear on screen. And the voices reveal the intimate details of life in a small community, filling in the context, telling one story where the camera tells another. It almost seems to be lying to us. But that seems to be the point; the placid surface and the activity beneath. Put them together and they are an exquisitely made essay on life in early twenty first century rural Wales.

If you look closely at a sleeper's eyes, you'll notice a lot of rapid movement beneath closed lids. If you watch the sleeper for a long while you will see a lot of activity even in repose. This film is just like that.

elegy

[lovekick · 9/10 · 28 June 2009]

This film is a joy.

Its wider messages of rural decay are evident but its specific scenes are portraits of individuals, relationships, landscapes and history that are worthy of consideration independent of the bigger theme.

A yellow mobile library is allowed Big Picture time to cross a whole screensworth of green Welsh mountain. This beautiful scene alone is worth the watch. The library's aesthetic and romantic appeals hold hands with the utilitarian demands of its users who value and use this service.

Meeting points are charted and cherished - school, the fair, church, shops, sheepdog trials, tea.

Weather and the seasons frame but don't constrain the 'story'.

The past is present, maybe the future is not, but this film is about now and, though (I feel) elegiac, not morbid.

The unscripted (but deftly edited) humour (non-compliant sheep, frozen posted owls and mobile library health & safety, that would all do Coogan/Brydon/Gervais proud) adds both lightness and gravity to the mix.

The darkest picture in the film, a curtain flapping in a deserted farm house near the film's end recalls 'Time Passes' in Virginia Woolf's 'To The Lighthouse'; the message may not be hopeful, but this film finds Lily Briscoe's line.

An excellent meditative documentary of Welsh rural life

[johndavies007 · 9/10 · 26 April 2016]

Sleep Furiously is a documentary that's something of a labour of love for Welsh rural way of life in a changing world. Liverpool-born director Gideon Koppel is the son of Jewish refugees who settled in the Trefeurig community, consisting of a few villages/hamlets in West Wales, where he was brought up as a child. His father had been a well-known painter in South Wales, and his mother appears in the film.

Although not far from the main route to the sea for holidaymakers from Birmingham and the English West Midlands, Trefeurig is quite off the beaten track, in one of the least populated patches of England and Wales. This is not a film the Wales tourist board might come up with; it concentrates on the simple daily lives among the relatively austere, often bald hills, rather than more spectacular and crowd-pulling spots like the waterfalls at nearby Devil's Bridge/ Pontarfynach, or the coastline. Nor do we see the abandoned nearby lead and other mineral mines. Oh, this is the area too of the great (Welsh language) medieval poet Dafydd ap Gwilym , who wrote of courtly love, animals and nature, and some more bawdy goings on, including in praise of the penis. This film has conjured up in some critics' minds comparisons with another (lesser) poet Dylan Thomas' Under Milk Wood, but Thomas' view of Welsh life is more comical and satirical, set on the coast further South.

The film's title comes from a Noam Chomsky phrase "colorless green ideas sleep furiously"- that is one of its contrasts, as is its green-ness compared with greys too. With the beautiful and artful shots, it's more than a straightforward fly on-the-wall documentary- while unobtrusive and without voice-over, the director's character comes through. It's not so much a Wiseman film as a the film of a wise man, i'd say. Koppel has been employed teaching on films at Aberystwyth university, several miles from the film's setting. I like the way the static camera allows movement onto and off screen, generally resisting temptation to follow, and so increasing the sense of off-screen space

Sleep Furiously encourages contemplation. It quietly takes its time, mixes numerous (relatively) long takes with some shorter scenes and "timelapse", long shots with close details, mainly static camera with occasional movement, low shots e.g of hooves, with higher rural views. It could be considered a tapestry, interested in patterns, textures and effects of light, and also in the seasons and elements. The wind rustles the grass, blows clean white sheets on a line. The wind makes mischief with a new signpost, turning it in wrong directions- we may not need the accompanying ditty from a local to see how modern ways aren't always the most practical. The camera dwells on rocks, stones, tools, the light falling on a moth's wings, a pig's curly tail, while the sheep make memorable patterns in a landscape that would bring a knowing smile to Kiarostami.

Considered lyrical and poetic, it's unpretentious as the lives it portrays and the sponge cake we see being prepared. At its heart is the mobile library, a means for chat and for the outer world to penetrate the local consciousness. We see machines alongside older ways, mention of computers with sheep dog trials (a practice run), jams and vegetables, children dancing and making music. Although the school and future of the community may be under threat, alongside yawning, tea-making, rambling elders, we are reminded of youthful potential- fireworks a short exuberant contrast to the slowness of the pace and land.

There are pleasures to be gained from small contrasts: birth, death, vegetarian cookbook, mention of a pig's future fate…. Seek them and ye shall find. Trefeurig is part of Welsh-speaking Wales (the strongholds of the ancient language are mainly in the West), but there are English voices too. The general impression remains one of communal harmony. Roger Ebert found the film lovely but too complacent. Its soul is good and i think he's wrong on the second count. It was a worthy Sight & Sound film of the month.

It's a film for animal lovers (sheep, ferret, dogs, cat, cows, fish…count them!), taxidermists, tree lovers (one fine noble tree stays in the mind), tool-makers, agricultural students, anthropologists, cloud-watchers, tao-ist meditators, cultural historians, admirers of scenery and cinematography, as well as linguists. Approach it as you want, but watch in the right frame of mind, immersed in its gentle rhythms, and it should be very rewarding.

Not a story

[celiavelarde · 1/10 · 25 June 2009]

I completely agree with the above writer. The disjointed nature of the film made it impossible to follow any thread, and anything I was interested in was cut short. For instance, when the calf was born and the mother was licking it - endlessly - did it survive? Why did the dogs fight? I'm afraid I too thought all the longueurs were pretentious, and my neighbour looked at her watch four times! I feel that, although it was made with the best of intentions, there was a strong element of the Emperor's New Clothes about this film. If it was about the demise of a village, it was not made clear why the school closing meant everything else had to go. For me it didn't make a story.

Nice idea, terrible movie.

[tao902 · 1/10 · 15 June 2009]

A documentary about a Welsh farming community that is struggling to survive. Despite some beautiful scenic shots the film is awkwardly edited and of excessive duration. Many shots are long with little happening in them. It is not a good sign when you're desperately waiting for the film to end. This film does the farming community no favours. Some history, context and explanations for the village's demise would have given the film a clear purpose but we get little more than disconnected shots which are supposedly intended to have meaning but end up close to meaningless. The word 'pretentious' comes to mind. By the end of the documentary I didn't care if the community survived! Half the residents appeared to be English anyway! (I did sleep for a while, and yes, furiously).

Serene yet sentimentalised

[rogerdarlington · 21 July 2009]

The oxymoronic and enigmatically titled "Sleep Furiously" is the slowest film you will ever see. First-time director, producer and cinematographer Gideon Koppel portrays Trefeurig, the Welsh farming community in Ceredigion where he grew up and where his parents found refuge from Nazi Germany.

Over the seasons of a year, we are witness to the remorseless decline of a rural way of life that is serene but sentimentalised. There is no narration and no narrative and the dialogue - much of it in Welsh - is often banal, yet there are some stunning scenes and the whole thing has a certain elegiac charm.

During the performance, my young Welsh friend leaned over to my half-Welsh wife and commented: "Now I remember why I left Wales".