A Boy’s Life
Written by Chris Cooke | Posted by: Anonymous
Eric is a ten-year-old boy, left with his grandparents while his parents travel to America. He is unimpressed by their modest but hardly primitive country home, disgusted and disheartened by their unpalatable fare. So begins "Guttaperc," a film by Barbados-born producer/director Andrew Millington. But the Caribbean world Eric finds himself in is not as simple as he thought. Indeed, it is one caught in a struggle, represented by the two figures that dominate his life: his grandfather (played by Clairmonte Taitt), a local supplier of construction materials, and Sister Pam (Leonie Forbes), an elderly woman with her feet and gnarled cane firmly planted in the past.
Eric’s grandfather respects individual accomplishments, taking as much pride in the literature of his beloved Caribbean writers as in his own rise from worker in the cane fields to owner of a prosperous business. He is a kind man, but he thinks of himself first and listens to his friends, who tell him the days of kinship are over. Sister Pam, however, recognizes only the integrity of the community, passing on traditions to the young, involving herself in the lives of her people, and protesting the greed that progress inspires.
The conflict is heightened by the news that the government intends to build a tourist resort on the location of the village. Eric’s grandfather stands to gain from the deal, perhaps enough to build the dream house he has always desired; the villagers and Sister Pam will have to leave their homes and start anew.
All this weighs on Eric, an introverted boy who speaks very little and only with provocation. With so little dialogue to build up the boy’s character and conflict, Millington must use the sights and sounds of the film to evoke the turmoil of Eric’s mind. The film is rich with the roaring of waves, the rush of the incessant ravaging wind, the piercing rays of the sun. The lush sounds of the tropics are interrupted only occasionally–by the grinding noise of construction.
And Millington is adept with the camera, showing us evocative imagery, whether he is using the lens to explore a bowl full of gruel, record the lapping of waves over a corpse, or travel up a woman’s arm to her face. The camera makes us feel Eric’s bewilderment, frustration, and awe at the colorful and turbulent world he discovers, capturing his detached engagement with the events around him with shots around corners, through windows, and down halls.
Unfortunately, the occasional lapse in sound quality combines with some of the thicker, unfamiliar accents to make the film a bit hard to follow at times. And, more important, the film relies too heavily on voice-over, using exposition to patch together rifts in the narrative development, instead of scenes that could have added much drama and meaning to the film.
Indeed, Millington’s very impressive job behind the camera can make up for but not quite hide the sparseness of the plot. The film needs some fleshing out, with significant threads seemingly missing or introduced with little or no warning. In this, his first feature-length film, he seems to have tried to do a bit more with the film than he could fit.
But regardless of what might be added to the film, what is there is marvelous. "Guttaperc" is a beautiful film, worth seeing for the camerawork alone. And the conflict, although underdeveloped, feels quite real, made alive by the fine performances of Taitt and especially Forbes. Richard Weekes, as Eric, subtly portrays the turmoil beneath the boy’s introverted detachment, revealing the boy’s confusion in the twitch of a lip or a glistening eye. And the guttaperc (the Bajan word for slingshot) is a powerful and relevant image, the boy pulled tight between the tradition of old and the forces of change. When he finally does speak his mind, he does so with force and conviction, and Millington has carried us right along with him. We have seen and heard all that he has, and we hear his words as if they are our own.
