Paul Cowan's inouisitive eye: war games porn stars and the Ghosts of Westray - cinematographer - Interview

TAKE ONE, May, 2002 by Maurie Alioff

On television and in print, the story has been told many times. Cowan's movie is an object lesson in how a feature--length documentary can deepen understanding of an event, recounting it with an artistry that dignifies and universalizes the people involved. In West ray, Cowan finds the techniques he was groping toward in docudramas like Justice Denied (1989), which relied on predictable narrative techniques. Westray is much more fluid and graceful as Cowan collapses fragments of dramatic re--enactment into documentary footage and archival material, creating a non--linear stream of metaphors and heightened moments -- "docupoetry" rather than docudrama.

Juggling several time periods, Westray's most haunting images are staged in black--and--white shots and tilted angles that take the viewer back to public moments like the September 11, 1991 launch of the mine, and intensely private ones in the lives of the victims. Images of bad omens run through this movie about doomed miners. For instance, in the opening moments, a sinister flock of birds takes flight and a hearse-like limousine crosses the path of a fire truck backing out of a station. Westray's striking visuals merge with a voice--over narration that sounds like nursery rhymes. A man and a woman (actor/director Michael Jones and Katie Malloch) trade lines like "He comes to town riding on a dream. Another feather in his cap, another impossible scheme." Or "If you don't act, that's a terrible crime, if you do, you're out of this mine." The sprightly verses seem incongruous, but they ironically bring to mind fairy--tale archetypes like evil kings, peasants under a spell and pied pipers who lead the innocent to their destruction. The narration underscores the naivite of people drawn to the mine by the false promise of financial security.

Above all, West ray brings the miners and their widows vividly to life. Throughout the movie, survivors re--enact their own histories in country music bars and at stock--car races, the stand--ins for the dead miners looking like shadowy ghosts. Working closely with Hannele Helm, his editor, Cowan aimed at purging Westray of anything that looked like a traditional NFB documentary, particularly featureless subjects "who just represented their class, and narration [that] tells you what to feel, preaching to the converted. Filmmakers can be so ascetic in their belief in the rightness of their cause, they forget they still have to move people and use all the elements that drama does. Suspense, irony, relief, tragedy," says Cowan.

Westray is not the first time Cowan directed people to re--enact their experiences. However, this time he went much further by asking traumatized people to relive their most painful moments in the living rooms, dance halls and churches that trigger their memories. In a scene that recreates the public announcement of the miners' grotesque deaths, Cowan moves in tight on the windows as they throw themselves back into the utter misery they will never forget.