The interesting parallel created with this, his latest work, is that it is inspired by the work of a man and his wife who many years ago (almost 100!) did the almost very same thing. The radical difference is that the technology employed by DH Lawrence and Freida was pen and paper, while Mark makes use of his tiny camcorder and editing software. In the end, it's wonderful to discover that the technology makes less difference than we thought, as the filmmaking is very organic, in the way it is shot, in the way it is edited, in the way that it is narrated, so much so that every now and again he adds special effects in the form of a frame within a frame, singling out pieces of the landscape, flora and even editing in bits of early films to accentuate the observations about the writer and about himself.
In fact, the work often becomes an interaction between the writer and the filmmaker. Lawrence himself speaks through the voice of Jarvis Cocker, and Mark Cousins talks to him directly even calling him - almost irreverently - "Bert" and having a go at some of the darker and most controversial sides of his personality, whilst at the same time delightfully seeing things of himself in Lawrence's own nature. This type of approach is reminescent of his previous meditative travellogue What is This Film Called Love?, a film that was a little more structured on a narrative level, and where he walked about Mexico with a laminated picture of Eisenstein pondering about the Russian cinematic innovator's idea and concept of "ecstasy". In 6 Desires, he is much more free, so much so that he allows himself the delight of making new discoveries, and even shift the attention away from the writer, and onto ther artists, painters and writers of the time, particularly Grazia Deledda, a Sardinian writer that because only the second woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. But these discoveries may also come out of the ordinary and the extraordinary, which seem to meet in mythical Sardinia, where surprises await at the turn of every corner. Men making music by running their hands on rocks, frighteningly fascinating processions, graffitis on walls of houses, the particular shape and form of the bark on a tree.
All this is summed up in 6 Desires, with desires listed, but desires being all around us. A celebration on the exterior and the interior. An impulsive study of the wonders of journeys, where the destination becomes an abstract context and alienation is not only inspired but encouraged. In the end, Cousins reaches his ecstasy much like it did in What is This Film Called Love?, and is playfully replaced by a female voice that delivers a most powerful, inspiring and invigorating monologues in essay documentaries and a crescendo that reminds us that we too have embarked on the journey by having been in the cinema the whole time - and because cinema is a journey, the final shot is a couple walking away in the distance, which recalls the ending of Chaplin's Modern Times.
