London

Well, I don't have anything to say about this film that's as intelligent as Margarita Nikolaevna's comments, which you should read.

A whole interconnected body of work appeared at the end of the twentieth century which seemed to want to deal with 'the problem of London'--with the fact that, while London had been the most modern city on the planet for a terrible length of time, it had never arrived at any conscousness of the nature of its own modernity. I'll name some of these works---Iain Sinclair's _Lights out for the Territory_, Allan Moore's masterpiece, _From Hell_ (which this film understands, I think, much more deeply than the Hughes Brothers'), the pics of Mark Atkins, Peter Ackroyd's _Hawksmoor_, Michael Moorcock's _King of the City_, the job Bill Drummond did on the M25---but Patrick Keiller's film is the most magnificently negative and observant of all of these. Of course it enters into a dialogue with Benjamin's marvelous theorising about how Paris was the Capital of the 19th Century, but if you haven't seen it you should be warned that there's a real humour and humanity here which we're accustomed not to find in serious documentary: eg. the great joke of the mysterious guy in the shopping-centre reading Benjamin.... Oh, yeah, now I wait in the Ikea caff, piling meatball upon meatball, and waiting for the fullfilment and suppression of flat-pack...

I'm sorry, I know I am in the minority, but I really didn't get this doc-montage-essay, for all its wit and cleverness, and lush photography, and even lusher soundtrack, I felt I was being soundly manipulated by the filmmaker into seeing London as a political and spiritual wasteland. Yes, this film is, I suppose, artistically good, I felt some of the narration was poignant, and resonant of an underlying angst that many people experience in London, which can be isolating. Still, the haughty, droning voice of the narrator, really put me off. The simplistic dichotomy of labour versus conservatives, one good, the other doom laden, an insult to my intelligence, and the lack of voice within the film, apart from the writer's insistent polemic, was by far the most meaningful element. The film approves itself, and obliterates all dissent.

Woke before its time. Reeks of politics and identity politics. Lovey-leftism at its best - pure Fabianism. Of course the BFI love it. Interesting how the IRA issue has evaporated - largely due to terrorism becoming associated with other groups, I expect. A star for the images of London and a star for the idea.

I used to visit London since the mid-70s. From mid 70s through the 90s, London was more or less the way Patrick Keiller presented it. Beautiful, charming and dangerous. The Beauty and charm of the city lurked in its history, lore, architecture and diversity of its inhabitants among many other things; while its dangerousness came from its wild and lawless youth and thugs. I recall how risky it was to walk alone into certain parts of the city at night. Whereas London in the early 21st century is totally different from its 20th century version. I remember London in 2005 or around when I visited it last, clean, tidy and safe with all sorts of surveillance devices everywhere. I have no intent to relate this to party politics; but for sure it is high tech, and the will to use high tech to tame and discipline the wild in a huge and beautiful metropolitan, that transformed the city from the Jungle it was to the park it is now.

This is simply awful.

It's very pretentious. Constant references to artists and philosophers, even though they are irrelevant to prove the point the narrator is trying to make. Use of the french language for no other reason than trying to sound "fancy".

Some pretty shots, like the recurring theme of water, that was good.

Extreme manipulation of the events that happened in 1992. Conservatives win the election and right after the IRA bombing is shown, almost suggesting that the bombing was a response to the result.

Constantly criticizing the monarchy and conservative supporters. Making it hard to classify this as an excursion film. If it was up to me, I would put this in the "*Author complains for 1 hour and a half straight through its characters about the world he lives in and blames SOCIETY" genre. Yep, its one of those wE LIvE in A sOCieTY BS movies.