Uberto Pasolini on STILL LIFE

Uberto Pasolini is known mostly for his production work on films like The Full Monty and Palookaville, two films from the nineties, which were deeply rooted in the unemployed class. This is a theme which Still Life deals with more directly, as we witness the life of John May, the lead character of his second directorial effort. John May is a simple character with an unusual job he finds fulfilling. He works in the city council and fills the role of the man who looks after the dead with no family ties or close friends who will pay for the funeral. His strange investigative job hence entails trying to track down these relatives and acquaintances and to make sure that the dead really was alone before the council disposes of the body.

“The journey started with an article I read in an English newspaper,” said Pasolini at the press conference of the film which was screened here at the Venice Film Festival in the Orizzonti selection. “It was about a person who does this job, a profession which was started in the nineteenth century and which is simply for health reasons. That allow me to pursue and interest in lives and social situations that are very separate from my own. I come from a privileged background and find my own life very uninteresting from a storytelling point of view.”

The theme of unemployment ties into this film when John May is told that his parsimonious and caring methods of giving the dead a proper funeral instead of disposing of them by cheaper means are much too expansive, as well as his investigations being much too lengthy. It is for that reason that his boss fires him, with an arrogant smile on his face. He is told that the case he is working on will be his last case and is given three days to finish it. Because his work, however bizarre and macabre it may seem, is seen as a vocation by May who finds it fulfilling and is shown as perhaps the only ray of sunshine in his otherwise lonely life, this we are sure is a thing which will affect him deeply. On the other hand, his last case leads him to embark on a journey that may rid him of his lonely repetitive existence of the kind that the dead with which he works led.

 “Unemployment interests me, which is why I made The Full Monty and Palookaville a few years ago,” explained the director. “This time I discovered what isolation, solitude and loneliness means to so people in places like London. But while in the previous films it was more of a research, in this case I brought in something from my own personal experiences of loneliness. Walking in a house with no noise or smell. That leads you to repetitive action. It leads you to sit at the same place on the table, to open the same can of tuna. I do feel loneliness. In the last five years of my life, most of the time I come home to an empty house. To many people it is not an occurrence. It’s not just in the evening but all day everyday all alone. Perhaps the only human interaction may be with the person who packs your shopping at the supermarket.”

However, as Pasolini mentions, there are different kinds of loneliness. “I felt and feel lonely, and do not want to be alone. John May is not lonely. He doesn’t feel lonely and thinks he is happy because he feels fulfilled by the job he had and his dedication to it. Of course, we as the audience want his life to grow and expand.”

This film is essentially a character study. Conveying the mood of the title, the camera is quite still and on tripod. Very often, the character of John May is quite still. It is quite a stylised vision, mostly deadpan, though sometimes its faithfulness to the vision makes the film bland and unexciting. However, Eddie Marsan’s lead performance is very suited and he very ably carries the weight of the movie on his shoulder, considering the fact that more than half of the film consists of just him, alone and not sharing the screen with any supporting character. “When I produced this film’s called The Emperor’s New Clothes, Eddie only had four lines but with his delivery of those lines he gave humanity to the character he was connecting and interacting with, which was Napoleon. When it came time to write a first treatment and then the script, Eddie was my photograph on my desk.”

While Still Life may not be everyone’s dish, its pace and purpose is quite demanding and undoubtedly restricts its audience to an art house one. It doesn’t lack the deadpan kind of humour and an influence from the work of Ozu, both thematically and cinematically, can be observed in it and appreciated. Most importantly, Still Life to me represents something else. It represents the sort of film that is a purifying experience among the glamour and the golden lights of the big premiere, the pretentiousness of the experimental films, the clamour of the political features and the hipster fashion of the majority of the independent work. And on that level, Uberto Pasolini’s piece works quite well.

-          Matt Micucci, 3/9/2013