The film begins with text explaining that you will hear the recorded words of the people depicted, but you will see actors lip syncing them. Your first reaction may be: why?
The answer is in the watching. Done as a traditional documentary, The Arbor would be powerful. Andrea Dunbar grow up in horrible circumstances on a housing estate in Braford, England, Remarkably, she wrote a play as a teenage, followed by a second play and a film script, capturing her life, with traces of humor. Unfortunately she was an alcoholic, had three children by three different fathers, and died of an embolism, in the words of one of her daughters, "at home" - the local pub.
The film follows the lives of her children, especially Lorraine, a half-Pakistani child who manages to recreate all the horror of life she was born into, and then some.
The lip syncing technique allows the film to put the testimony in different context, some times in the places where the events occurred (or similar enough) and sometimes in an invented space that adds power to them. For example, after Lorraine reads a speech a character based on her made in a play about her mother's life, we see her other family members sitting scattered across an empty theater, giving their reactions (from support, to anger, to questioning). The approach places them together in a way a straightforward documentary would not. It also allows the film to place characters within the visual consequence of their actions.
I'm not doing it justice. The material is liberated, amplified, made more real through the innovative technique. Highly recommend this unique fascinating film. Also recommend you keep tissues around...
The answer is in the watching. Done as a traditional documentary, The Arbor would be powerful. Andrea Dunbar grow up in horrible circumstances on a housing estate in Braford, England, Remarkably, she wrote a play as a teenage, followed by a second play and a film script, capturing her life, with traces of humor. Unfortunately she was an alcoholic, had three children by three different fathers, and died of an embolism, in the words of one of her daughters, "at home" - the local pub.
The film follows the lives of her children, especially Lorraine, a half-Pakistani child who manages to recreate all the horror of life she was born into, and then some.
The lip syncing technique allows the film to put the testimony in different context, some times in the places where the events occurred (or similar enough) and sometimes in an invented space that adds power to them. For example, after Lorraine reads a speech a character based on her made in a play about her mother's life, we see her other family members sitting scattered across an empty theater, giving their reactions (from support, to anger, to questioning). The approach places them together in a way a straightforward documentary would not. It also allows the film to place characters within the visual consequence of their actions.
I'm not doing it justice. The material is liberated, amplified, made more real through the innovative technique. Highly recommend this unique fascinating film. Also recommend you keep tissues around...