“In the early days, I’d sometimes find the slack time to climb up into the sunlight but the work was always here to draw me down. I’d listen for the bell, you see. My face would be in the sun but my mind would be down here in the dark and the shadows”
The cyclicality of predetermined fate, the burgeoning wreckage of mankind amongst the debris of its own creation, the solace one finds in their work.
Clarke creates a masterpiece here. 40 minutes of pure cinema, ironic considering this is television. It’s difficult to paint with tenderness without it becoming cloying. Here, the brush is so feather-light that the sincerity becomes emotional pain; Denholm Elliot’s remarkably subtle performance becomes empathetic rather than pitying.
The incongruous electronic score, evoking the red neon of the tunnel-side danger light. The signalman stepping out of the tunnel, the smoke billowing out of it like an inverted waterfall, the lost souls victim to the air. The fire and brimstone of a horrific crash in such a compressed space. This is equally a supernatural mood piece as it as a think piece about the inherently alien industrial world. There’s little here that isn’t perfectly placed.
The sneaking feeling that this is utterly perfect got under my skin on first viewing. On second viewing that feeling had burrowed even deeper to a point of assuredness. It is perfection. Lawrence Gordon Clarke the absolute God that you are.
“In the early days, I’d sometimes find the slack time to climb up into the sunlight but the work was always here to draw me down. I’d listen for the bell, you see. My face would be in the sun but my mind would be down here in the dark and the shadows”
The cyclicality of predetermined fate, the burgeoning wreckage of mankind amongst the debris of its own creation, the solace one finds in their work.
Clarke creates a masterpiece here. 40 minutes of pure cinema, ironic considering this is television. It’s difficult to paint with tenderness without it becoming cloying. Here, the brush is so feather-light that the sincerity becomes emotional pain; Denholm Elliot’s remarkably subtle performance becomes empathetic rather than pitying.
The incongruous electronic score, evoking the red neon of the tunnel-side danger light. The signalman stepping out of the tunnel, the smoke billowing out of it like an inverted waterfall, the lost souls victim to the air. The fire and brimstone of a horrific crash in such a compressed space. This is equally a supernatural mood piece as it as a think piece about the inherently alien industrial world. There’s little here that isn’t perfectly placed.
The sneaking feeling that this is utterly perfect got under my skin on first viewing. On second viewing that feeling had burrowed even deeper to a point of assuredness. It is perfection. Lawrence Gordon Clarke the absolute God that you are.
