(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
16 Years Till Summer
Director and photo: Lou McLoughlan
Match Me! – How to Find Love in Modern Times
Directed by: Lia Jaspers, photo: Tim Kuhn
In his work on the documentary 16 Years Till Summer, filmmaker Lou McLoughlan has followed his main character Uisdean Mackay for four years, from his release after 16 years in prison to taking care of his sick, old father in his remote house in the Scottish Highlands. The idyllic surroundings in contrast with Uisdean's past, with a lifetime sentence for the murder of a woman he was living with at the time.
Somewhere in the film, he tells of the incident that caused him to shoot his girlfriend in close range with his hunting rifle, which Uisdean himself claims was an accident. Whether his version is true leaves the film up to the audience to consider. As director McLoughlan said in an interview with the British Daily Record, this documentary does not intend to reconsider the case. Uisdean was nevertheless convicted of the murder, and has served 16 years for it. Instead, 16 Years Till Summer is a kind of character study, which focuses on the protagonist's fragile freedom after all the years behind the walls, where he also became addicted to heroin. Now he has put both prison life and substance abuse behind him, but faces major challenges in his attempt to reintegrate into a small community where he is labeled a murderer. And only a minor offense can cause him to continue the atonement of his original life sentence.
The film project began with a short film called Caring for Calum from 2011, which the Scottish director made as part of his film school education. Among other things, it was rewarded with two BAFTA awards and the Grierson Award documentary, placing McLoughlan on BAFTA's "Brits to watch" list. This then helped her get funding for a full-length movie, where she has delved deeper into the relationship between Uisdean and his old father Calum. But this is not all the film deals with. In the aforementioned interview, McLoughlan states that she originally assumed that Uisdean's story was about the unconditional love between parent and son. As she filmed, however, she discovered that it was something bigger – more specifically, an exploration of love itself.
Observer. During the film, the main character ends up in prison. Here he sits when his father dies, and it hurts Uisdean even more that he is deprived of the right of inheritance to the house. Still, life looks much brighter when he starts writing letters to a woman named Audrey, who is waiting for him when he eventually releases again. And thus the film also becomes a depiction of their budding love.
Once again, Uisdean can make cautious plans for a more normal life, although he will also face challenges after moving in with Audrey. The film also paints a kind of portrait of her, without McLoughlan falling for the temptation it may have been to explore some women's attraction towards imprisoned men as a phenomenon. The director's approach is constantly observant, and her camera apparently never becomes intrusive to the people she films. Maybe that's why she gets so close to them, at the same time as the audience gets to form their own perception of their fates and motives. The film can also be read as a post about prison as a form of punishment, and what a burden such a background can be – well notice without it becoming polemical, and without apologizing or defending Uisdean's actions.
Match making. 16 Years Till Summer was screened at the Sheffield Doc / Fest documentary film festival in June, as is another film that also explores the conditions of love – albeit with a very different approach. I Match Me! – How to Find Love in Modern Times follows the German-born filmmaker Lia Jasper's three young people's search for love. Surprisingly, none of these go the way of Tinder, match.com or other internet-based love search tools, although this must be said to be the most typical approach of our modern times. However, it is liberating that filmmaker Jaspers has found people who have chosen to use other and more unorthodox means, as online dating is already duly covered both on film and in other media. Moreover, it seems to be a point that the film's three main characters, despite their different prehistory and starting point, all want to let some outsiders assist them in finding the right life companion.
Both films show how Cupid's arrows can hit when you least expect it.
We are introduced to German Johanna in Ireland, where she will participate in a «matchmaking festival». She is a convinced romantic who is easy to fall in love with, but who is nevertheless characterized by the fact that a former boyfriend – who she considered her great love – started a new relationship while she was traveling. Ironically, the purpose of this trip was to find herself, something Johanna has to do through the journey she embarks on in the film – which in turn becomes a kind of prerequisite for her to be able to find a partner.
Finnish Sampsa has been married for ten years, but is now single – a marital status he has very limited experience with. He has therefore contacted "The Lover's Matchmaking Agency" in Helsinki, run by two colorful ex-actors. The duo offers a relatively unconventional method of splicing, which consists of different dates that will give the participants new and different experiences with their potential partners – not entirely different from the idea behind so-called "team building". After an initial blind party (with f, not t – all participants are blindfolded!), Sampsa and the other hopefuls are sent out to arranged meetings, with specific tasks such as having to break rules.
Austrian Sarah, for her part, has always done well on her own, but at the age of 27 she has realized that it is soon time to start a family – and consequently she has to find a husband. The alternative-minded woman is interested in yoga and meditation, and skeptical of the Western tradition of following love. She therefore lets the yogis choose a mate for her at a "matchmaking retreat" in Italy, and enters into what can be called an arranged partnership with a young man from Lithuania. After a period in a distance relationship, she decides to move to him, despite the fact that she herself comes from a richer country. Even more surprising is the formerly so independent Sarah's reason for this choice, which is that she wants to let him take care of her instead of vice versa – so that he will feel like a man.
The essence of love. Like 16 Years Till Summer does not want Match Me! to place too much emphasis on the past of their main characters, even though it obviously affects the choices they make and the opportunities they have today. Admittedly, this naturally applies to a greater and heavier degree to Uisdean in the former film, but the painful, formative experiences also seem to be prominent in Johanna in particular and to a certain extent also Sampsa in Lia Jasper's documentary. It should be objected, however, that the film would have had greater impact if it had taken us deeper into love grief and the fear of loneliness. The story of Sarah is by far the most interesting in Match Me !, and it is also her we get to know best. Sampsa's dates are fun, but are mostly experienced as curious individual episodes without a proper conclusion – and one is not convinced that his matchmakers will revolutionize the dating industry. Johanna's development process, on the other hand, may seem somewhat unfocused on the part of the filmmaker, as this part of the documentary is as much about Johanna's artistic self-realization project as her search for love. But as previously mentioned, this can be a necessary part of the path to what she is looking for.
Match Me! is a charming, light and rather optimistic film which in this way stands in contrast to the far more serious and melancholy 16 Years Till Summer. Nevertheless, both films are basically about the essence of love. Both show how Cupid's arrows can hit when you least expect it – at the same time as they also draw a picture of love as an active decision. And last but not least, the Match Me! and 16 Years to close, observational documentaries with a lot of love for the people they tell about.
16 Years Till Summer is this month's streaming movie for subscribers. For passwords, see the paper newspaper or contact abo@nytid.no
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