I complained about the subtitles in “The Arbor” as soon as I saw them. I wrote off subtitles for an English language movie as one more obnoxious gimmick in an already experimental British documentary that from the start tests our understanding of what a documentary is.
But before long, I was glad to have them. There’s no substitution for this thick Yorkshire dialect in creating the most authentic version of this story, and they allowed me to hang on every word of this compelling and fascinating experiment in filmmaking.
“The Arbor” tells the life story of the playwright Andrea Dunbar, a woman who saw success on stage as young as the age of 15, but then gave birth to three children each from different fathers and died from a drug overdose at 29.
We hear it through the voices of her children, lovers, parents, neighbors and Andrea herself, but we see it through the eyes of actors. Clio Barnard has made a film that teeters the line between documentary and biographical fiction by casting actors to lip sync to the vocal testimonial of the actual subjects.
This gives Barnard the freedom to stage her actors in social tableaux settings as they deliver harrowing testimonial directly to the camera. It’s a unique cinematic style that is not only constantly visually stimulating but one that redefines the way a documentary could be filmed. Continue reading “The Arbor”