Who is to blame when a life goes terribly wrong?
Should we blame the alcoholic mother more concerned with drink, men, and her own once-promising career? Is it the deadbeat abusive father unconcerned with the existence of his only child? Would you blame the ignorant, racist society believing a child, half British, half Pakistani is somehow less of a person than her peers?
How much blame should we place on the neighborhood environment - a place that supports alcoholism and abuse on its best days... creating a culture that devolves into a bastion of hard drugs and prostitution?
Or does all the blame simply fall on the individual? After all, her two siblings grew up in the same environment yet managed to avoid the same pitfalls that befell their older sister.
These are the questions inadvertently raised by Clio Barnard’s movie, The Arbor.
Innovative Documentary
Classifying this movie is rather difficult. In some ways it is a documentary; just not in the truest sense of the word. Barnard conducted audio interviews with the individuals portrayed and then hired actors to lip-synch the recorded lines. So in a way it is a performance piece. The movie also re-stages key points of an autobiographical play using a bare bones approach reminiscent of the style Lars Van Trier uses in his US Trilogy. Beyond the acting portions, The Arbor also uses archival film from an actual early 1980s British documentary as well as archival television newscasts.
All of these devices are employed to tell two separate, sad tales inextricably linked by family blood and misery.
Working Class Heroine
The movie takes its name from a play of the same name written in 1980. The playwright’s name was Andrea Dunbar. Andrea had taken stories of her extremely poor, sub-working class life living on a tough, impoverished street named Brafferton Arbor. Defeating all odds, the play was actually a success, having been produced by the prestigious Royal Court Theatre.
Barnard picks up the story at about that point. The play has been written and is already somewhat of a success. A documentary from the time is shown introducing Andrea. Bernard then stages scenes from the actual play to provide a back-story on Andrea and her family. He moves the story forward through the lip-synched interviews with Andrea’s children, Lorraine, Lisa and Andrew.
Their recollections are heart-wrenching tales of a childhood in the shadows of an alcoholic mother who continually falls for and has children with abusive men. Their tales are also a fascinating meditation on memory. Each recollects specific events in their lives differently, casting doubts on the veracity of the other's testimony.
What is not up for debate is that something in all the experiences gives birth to a self-destructive force in Lorraine, Andrea’s eldest child. Although Andrea was able to pen a movie called Rita, Sue and Bob Too as well as another play called Shirley, before her untimely death at the age of 29, the environment that spawned Andrea has not changed for Lorraine. Actually it has gotten worse.
Generational Curses
Lorraine succumbs to the same demons that held her mother captive; she falls in love with abusive men and develops a taste for substance abuse. Except where it was alcohol that ensnared Andrea, it is marijuana, then crack cocaine, and finally heroine that ruin Lorraine’s life. Her descent is told through more lip-synched testimonials from Lorraine, her siblings, other family members, and friends. The cycle of despair continues as Lorraine enters prostitution and eventually jail for manslaughter.
The Arbor is a fascinating, true-life human tragedy. It focuses a light on the power of the human mind; it dims that light with the shadows of a world populated by ignorance, drugs and violence. The movie forces us to question why some people are able to escape the harm of their surroundings while others continue the generational cycle of misery.
Who is to blame for it all is probably a question that will never be answered. But The Arbor is a film that will make you ponder those questions like few movies ever could.
- The Arbor
- Starring Kate Rutter
- Directed by Clio Barnard
- Year 2010
Running Time 94 minutes
Gregory Dew - Greg is a freelance writer with a Bachelors of Art in Journalism from The Ohio State University. He has been writing about the arts and ...
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