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Michael Grigsby's television films were frequently described as 'cinematic'.
Appropriately enough, many of these actually enjoyed a separate life on the big screen. Prints of A Life Apart continued to be distributed for non-theatrical
screenings for some years after its original transmission. Without commercial
breaks and on a larger screen, the film is likely to have had at least as great
an impact on its viewers.
Given its subject, it is not too fanciful to compare the film with an icon of
documentary cinema, John Grierson's Drifters (1929). Grigsby has admitted that the earlier film may have been a subliminal influence. His rejection of
voice-over in favour of occasional intertitles suggests a debt to silent cinema
and, like Grierson, Grigsby is very attentive to the visual and metaphorical
power of the raging sea.
Yet the contrasts are as instructive as the similarities. Drifting and
trawling are quite different forms of net-fishing, and Grierson was filming off
the East Coast, Grigsby off the West. Moreover, the more advanced technology
available to Grigsby - lighter-weight cameras, colour and, particularly, sound -
allows him much greater flexibility as a filmmaker than Grierson could have
hoped for. Above all, this expanded palette serves his agenda of conveying a
very different message from that of his great predecessor. He uses sound not
only to add extra visceral impact to the shots of waves hitting the deck, but
also to give voice to the trawlermen. Combined with his extensive
coverage of the men's lives and families on shore, this results in a much more
rounded, realistic picture of the fishing industry as a social phenomenon than
is suggested by Grierson's more abstract film.
Related to this, Grigsby has an anti-establishment political edge that
Grierson lacks, showing political and economic forces as busily at work as the
natural elements. This is brought out by the interviews with representatives of
the shipping firm. While they unintentionally condemn themselves with their
complacent, patronising comments, Grigsby's bias against them is clear. Whereas
the fishermen and families speak at length, over other imagery or direct to
camera, the bosses are filmed from an unsympathetic angle, and never seen
outside the artificiality of the interview situation. These manipulative
techniques distance them from viewers, and lead one to suspect that perhaps the
interview has been carefully edited to put them in the worst possible light.
Regardless, A Life Apart remains an usually powerful work.
Patrick Russell
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1. Rough sea (3:16)
