The Arbor

source: The Arbor

Whilst I haven't seen Rita, Sue and Bob Too (apart from YouTube clips), I was intrigued by The Arbor and the portrayal of playwright Andrea Dunbar who sadly died at the age of 29. The documentary style is something to behold, filmed amidst the council flats where Andrea grew up.

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...

It tells the life story of UK playwright Andrea Dunbar, who s was discovered at a very young age in the British housing projects known as 'The Arbor' where she wrote about the alcoholism and family decay she watched around her. The film uses two extraordinary devices, both of which I found off-putting at first, but had great impact by the end. First, scenes from Dunbar's plays are staged in the open lawn areas of the real life Arbor, so we see a fight taking place in a living room at night acted out on the grass in broad daylight (with a couch and other living room props sitting there surreally, watched by – presumably – the neighborhood people still struggling under the same conditions. At first this just seemed distracting, but over time, it helped bring home that Dunbar's works represented real people, real lives, real pain. The second, even odder and more audacious move, is to have all the interviews with the real participants acted out by professional actors lip-syncing to the recorded words of the real people. Again, the was distracting for the first while, but eventually it lead to the film feeling simultaneously dreamy and like a memory, and in some way more 'real' than if the actors simply used their own voices. A very moving film that doesn't always work, but his heroic enough in it's bravery that it more than overcomes the occasional missed step.

Contains mild spoilers The Arbor tells the story of the late playwright Andrea Dunbar and her story up until her early death at 29. The film plays in a documentary format with recreations of her play The Arbor in between and it is in here that we really get a sense of just how autobiographical the play is. It is made well enough that we do not think it is interchanging quickly between these scenes that were difficult to watch further into the film given the continued context being made. Even halfway into the film I felt connected with it and didn't feel too rushed given the quite short run time. The rest of the film revolved around interviews with the people in her life, revolving round her family and portions of people on the estate. Even though actors were used on film they are actually lip syncing actual words spoken, a clever technique as it allowed them to open up more and made those words powerful. However it should not be expected that the film is all about Dunbar and does shift focus onto her children especially her daughter Lorraine who went through a traumatic time as a mixed race person growing up in a racially intolerant estate. Her story becomes just as relevant as Andrea's the more you hear about it. I was actually at a Q&A session with director Clio Barnard and this was highly intentional. The film was shot cleverly without being in a conventional documentary format with characters talking directly to camera. Real eye contact is made with the audience in this respect resonating even though it is played by actors. In summary though this film is a difficult watch and I've only really scratched the surface in terms of what the film portrays. Really do check it out as it is a really moving story that stays in the mind greatly afterwards.

I go into movies with no expectations...also I had no clue who was Andrea Dunbar so that really didn't help. I felt like I just wasted an hour and half watching this film. Nearly all positive reviews comment on how creative Clio Barnard is with the verbatim theater, AKA "lip synching". Sure, it's interesting for a few minutes but the novelty wore off...it would have achieved the same results if they used the original footage of interviews. Perhaps the techniques were too artsy for me. This "docudrama" focused on Andrea then transitioned to Lorraine...both figures are equally tragic but it makes me sad how irresponsible people are, especially with children involved. Neither women are fit to be mothers...it's like an extended episode of a bad reality TV show where the cameras follow people who are trainwrecks. Yes, I realize alcohol and drug addictions consume lives but they have no one to blame but themselves. It's hard to pull for any of the characters. The story itself is very slow moving. The only bright moment was Lorraine dancing on top of her dad's car...it was a sweet moment of innocence. The film would have been better served if it's half an hour shorter and played on PBS.

I loved everything about this sad film. The technique of post syncing shouldn't have worked, nor the acting of the play on the streets either, but they really do. The pacing of the original interviews is very interesting,very steady. There is something marvellous about the way the accents are subtly yet profoundly different from those that actors generally impose, and knowing that these voices are those of the actual people was very moving. Seeing the real people in what would normally have been flashback but in this case is views into a previous documentary really worked. This is a very powerful story of a tragedy with very little joy. When I see Rita, Sue and Bob Too again, one of my favourite films and one that puts most other working class depictions into a cocked hat, I wonder what my mood will be.

'The Arbor' of the title refers to a street called the 'Brafferton Arbor' on the Buttershaw estate in the city of Bradford, West Yorkshire, England. The people who lived there back in the 1980's were not rich, but one of them, Andrea Dunbar, became well known as a playwright. A lot of her work was biographical and this film tells us about her and about her oldest daughter, Lorraine, both through her work and by the use of actors lip-syncing to the voices of her friends and family. It is no secret that Andrea Dunbar died quite young, but she did have two plays open in London and one of them was made into a film in 1987. This was, of course, Rita, Sue and Bob Too!. If you haven't seen it and you're interested in this documentary, it's one I can recommend. But back to 'The Arbor', it is a very touching film at times, it can be quite dark too, but over all the people speaking are very realistic about life, the universe and everything. I found it quite compelling viewing, partly because I work in the city of Bradford and it's quite sad to think these things are still going on today (particularly around the area where I work). I guess if you're up for a gritty realistic tale of northern folk then I can highly recommend it. Just as a footnote, there's a piece of archive footage of Andrea getting on a train near the end of the film. She is getting the train at my local railway station… A small claim to fame for the town I frequent. My Score: 7.7/10

I was hugely disappointed by this. The description of the film is wrong - it's not really about Andrea Dunbar at all - she only features in the first third of the film. Rather it's about the desperate life of one of her children - a spiral into addiction hell and everything which that entails, all described in graphic detail. I felt very uneasy at the 'poverty *' aspect of the film - what are we to take from it other than these people are in desperate cycles of violence and addiction and alcoholism, with no redeeming features at all? The lip-synch acting is clever initially but is too strained to last the length of a feature and becomes gimmicky. Andrea Dunbar's story is hugely compelling but the story of the tragedy of her family and focus on her desperate child is not. Made me sad and angry.

By using actors who are lip-syncing interviews of actual people in Andrea Dunbar's life, this film pushes the documentary genre completely into the dramatic cinema field, with very interesting and moving results. Mix in stagings of her plays in the actual British housing projects where they were set, and vintage TV footage, you get a fascinating very creative mix. It's also a very enlightening portrait of a woman who used art and the written word to pull herself out of the slums, but failed to change as a human being, basically living the life of the housing project trash that she wrote about, abusing her children as a result. A fresh and very cinematic take on the documentary form. Check it out.