Audience Member Commentary (thanks to Suellen)

On Wednesday and Thursday I had the privilege of seeing the US premiere of "A Skin Too Few" at the Atlanta Film Festival. I got to see it twice, since it was shown one evening and then the next afternoon. I really can’t say enough about this lovely film (but of course I’ll try my damnedest :-) ) It’s already been described once, and very well, by someone on this list who attended the Amsterdam premiere, but that’s been awhile ago. So for what it’s worth, here’s how it seemed to me—

First of all, it blew away the documentary shown on the BBC a couple of years ago, there is just no comparison. This one was visually (and aurally) quite beautiful, and very coherent, very artistically done with an enormous amount of empathy. I have no film experience so I don’t know technicalities, but it seemed to me to be very high-caliber work, and I don’t mean that from a "money" standpoint. It was a film made by artists, whereas the BBC film was not, as far as I could tell.

As for the actual content, you will have to take apart my pastiche of impressions here. There were indeed home movies from Burma, both at the beginning and the end, just tantalizing bits like memories of a dream, Nick’s parents at the first, and Nick and Gabrielle more at the end. There was no narrator, and you didn’t miss one. The Dutch subtitles were distracting at first, but of course they’d been essential for the original audience! Gabrielle was very much featured throughout—and I found it interesting that not one other woman appeared in the film. Robert Kirby and John Wood both spoke (and Paul Weller for one bit! note, that is WELLER, not Nick’s friend Paul Wheeler) and Brian Wells, just as glib as he was in the other film. Kirby is not glib at all, he is a very sweet man, and Wood very taciturn, even as he talked about the sadness he’d felt. There was one bit of Keith Morris talking, and of course Joe Boyd did his part, although not as much as in the BBC film. And through it all you heard the voices of Molly and Rodney talking in their interviews that are still preserved on tape, often while we were shown views of Nick’s recreated bedroom.

The actual information given, the things people said, stuck very close to what everyone already knows about Nick, what we‘ve all heard before. But I don’t think the point of this film was to impart new information, except a small anecdote here and there, Gabrielle talking about the circumstances of her parents telling her Nick had died, for instance. Although the whole thing was very organized and coherent, it was actually more impressionistic than informative. The bits of people talking were bracketed by scenes of Tanworth, some aerial—trees blowing, the train at the Danzey station, the sky darkening over the church spire—while Nick’s songs played. These scene-and-song interludes were leisurely, yet they did not appear as simply "filler" or padding; you accepted and loved them as being necessary to the essence of Nick that was being put across.

Gabrielle played a tape of a song of Molly’s, How Wild the Wind Blows, pointing out that Nick’s style and method of composition seemed to come from her, and you could hear very strongly what she meant. I remember on this list Ian MacDonald once sniffed at Molly’s songs as merely "charming," without the depth of Nick’s, but this one was dark and haunting, not a love song. The resemblance to Nick’s work was striking. She also read a poem of Molly’s about how people keep a shell of living around them to protect themselves from seeing too much of the world’s darkness, but that some people break the shell with their fingers and look through. Another fascinating thing was watching (and hearing) John Wood at the soundboard, taking apart the tracks of At the Chime Of a City Clock so you could hear each one, and Kirby talking about the different musical lines intertwining. The tracks of Hazey Jane were also taken apart, and just the percussion part of the song's opening was played at the beginning of the section 1971-1974, called "Home Again," with added thunder. (At least, that was what my son John said it was.)

Visual images of Nick—just lovely, and very plentiful, considering there is no video of him as an adult. (This was a beef I had with the BBC film, where you hardly saw Nick at all.) A lot of the Keith Morris photos, of course, as well as a few childhood and schoolboy snapshots. There was a "wash" of the photos of him leaning against the wall with the people going by, and sometimes he had moved so little from shot to shot that, at one point, the pictures shown one after another gave the eerie impression of him turning his head slightly. It even took my breath away the second time, when I was watching for it. One KM picture I hadn’t seen before showed him reading underneath a tree, his face pensive. Another one, the coup de grace of the entire collection of photos used for this film as far as I was concerned, was an early KM one of him sitting out in that field, very close up, his eyes clear and serene and his hair blown across his face—oh my gosh! why haven’t we seen this photo before?!!

And of course the darling baby in the home movies at the very end, a dear little chunk in a white baby dress, about 6 months old, blond, all cheeks of course, and his eyes looking sleepy even when he was alert, not wide-eyed like most babies. He was being lifted and held by his dad, and tossed in the air by his mum (at which he laughed), and petted and settled on the lawn by his big sister. He toppled forward once, but they set him back up, and he didn't even cry. He was just precious, a serious, contented little fellow.

The film opens with the lyrics of Hazey Jane being scratched across the screen in Nick’s handwriting. Then you see a close-up of his eyes looking at you sideways, from one of the Hampstead Heath photos, and then you hear him take a breath and sigh it out, and begin to sing Way To Blue, as the views of the countryside begin. It was stunning. And it did not go downhill from there, believe me. It ended with Nick at about age 3, by the seaside with Gabrielle, and the frame froze of this little boy standing there in the breakers with the sun shining on him, at the edge of the ocean, and Northern Sky playing—I could not help crying, both times.

My 14-year-old John had come with me voluntarily, and to my surprise and delight said definitely that he wanted to go back and see it again the next day. We had reserved judgment about doing that until we saw it the first time, and I’d thought he would still be reluctant—but he has viewed Nick as a real entity since he was 9, and he’d been totally involved with the film emotionally and had some good observations. He was very taken with Molly’s song, and said his favorite part was seeing Nick as a baby. He also loved the views of Tanworth, since we’ve both been there.

The premiere itself was in one of those big complexes that had 24 theaters. None of the beautiful posters of Nick looking down at the Tanworth church were in evidence, which disappointed me, I had wanted to see one close up. Wednesday night at 9:30 was better attended than I had anticipated; I’d expected only a handful. But the theater we were in probably seated about 150 (I am not a good judge of these things) and it was about half full. John was the youngest there, both times, and I was by no means the oldest, but most people seemed to be in their twenties or thirties. Many had come not because they were Nick Drake fans (although they may have gone home as Nick Drake fans!) but because they were film buffs or students and simply wanted to take in as many of the new indie films as possible. So I heard several comments on how good the film was, from people for whom the content was beside the point. The person who introduced the film said it was one of the most beautiful she’d seen. And I heard two young men passing in the hall:

"You gonna stay and see the Nick Drake one?"

"No…we don’t really have the time—"

"Do it—DO IT!"

Thursday afternoon at 3:30 there were fewer people, simply because of work and school commitments I’m sure. There was one man there in a suit and tie, munching snacks, who looked as if he might have saved his lunch hour for this. During both screenings I noticed how still everyone was, as if spellbound; nobody fidgeted. You could probably argue that film buffs are naturally that way while they watch any movie, but I prefer to think it was the nature of this film.

It has a very haunting quality; I haven’t been able to get it out of my head since, or to sleep very well.

If any of you can possibly get to a screening of this, GO SEE IT—if you have any artistic sensibilities at all, you will not be disappointed. I took two vacation days and spent money on a hotel and meals, and drove for hours both ways, endangering our lives in Atlanta rush hour traffic (aaugh!), and it was totally worth all that, I am so glad I did. Now I’m praying for the film’s eventual release on video or DVD because I would love to own this piece of art permanently. Hopefully sooner or later it will be available in some way to everyone.