Steel Homes: A Prison for the Soul

The personification of the loneliness of melancholy; that would be the only way I could describe the feeling inside as I sat; detached. Detached from the wraith like creatures stalking the halogen lit hallways, desperately searching in some way for reconciliation, redemption; even freedom. It may strike others as overly ironic if they thought that the filmmaker wasn't being deliberate, but for me you just wouldn't make a film about over-attachment that felt so detached without clear foresight into what you were doing. It’s a very clever thing to do, to be able to juxtapose the tone and feeling of a film from the subject matter and have it work so seamlessly. In the hands of another director, this could have just become another piece of uninteresting, overbearing schmaltz, but by taking an non-conventional direction the film becomes almost like a scientific study – with the camera morphing into a curious eye, watching with a sense of wonder and bewilderment.

I believe the director’s key aim was to show how the unavoidable passing of time affects our psychological make-up. Although every individual story in the film is different, they all deal with the need to hold on to elements of the past and the need to have a sanctuary; a home. Another recurrent theme that I felt was apparent was the feeling that I was looking at a prison of souls. The way the camera statically observed the grey corrugated corridors, filled with the echo of locking doors. I can, to some extent identify with the people in this film; I too have always felt a compulsion to hold onto objects just in case. However with time I have reduced these compulsions, not because I had to but because I wanted to. I discovered that our minds and bodies – as vessels, are the only objects that are able to carry our story with total purity and conviction. So I deeply sympathise with the floating, faceless voices that carry this lonely narrative across the usual barriers of documentary filmmaking, until it becomes something else entirely.

It was the ‘arms-length’ approach that impressed me the most about the film; however I believe many people would have looked at the setting and subject matter in front of them and gone down the conventional road of Vox-Pop interviews, garnished with a distinct lack of subtlety. This film doesn't dumb things down for its audience; information trickles down throughout the running time, but most importantly more questions are asked rather than answered. This allows us, the viewer to think for ourselves. Too many filmmakers spoon-feed information to their audiences; they wish to be the all mighty purveyor of the facts, looking clever above the rest of us. Whereas this sits level with the audience and shrugs its shoulders along with it, and to me this conveyed perfectly the disgruntled and dysfunctional nature of modern society - I’m sure we have so much to say, but who’ll listen anymore? We might as well just shut ourselves off and let time take its course.

The lack of movement in the camerawork, takes the films underlying tone of loneliness to even greater heights. Silent static eyes that just sit there and watch the world go by, because when a camera is whizzing and zipping about, we can ascertain no sense of spatial perspective. The director has made a very conscious decision to use these shots; shots that make the environment look cold and empty. Choosing to use a very non-linear approach to the imagery when showing the people, once again cleverly stokes the fire of detachment whilst also building up the affecting human element of the film. Once you team the visual aesthetic with its audible counterpart then - for me at least, a vacuum was created. A space that looks so grim filled with objects that bring light, warmth and even meaning back into the lives of those that possess them; with the heart-warming/breaking voices filling the lonely corridors with the stories that are trapped within the walls.

Even if the tonal shifts will disjoint opinion for some, for me the director managed to create a brilliant fusion between contrasting emotional and visual feelings.