I have been strugling with this for a little while as to how to classify this piece. In the end I discarded 'Classical Music', and 'Theatre Production' in favour of 'Film', for that was primarily what it was and the point of focus the entire time. The pianist was almost incidental / inconsequential.
So, what was Mémoires d'un Amnésique exactly? Simply put, it was a one hour film, shown with piano accompaniment about the life and work of French classical composer Erik Satie. For a more detailed explanation then it delved into the mind or memory - or maybe that should be lack of memory [mémoires d'un amnésique translates almost literally as 'Memories of an Amnesiac'] - however in Satie's case his amnesic condition was probably brought about by his contiunual obsession with 'the Green Goddess' absinthe. This showed him to be a very peculiar and somewhat eccentric individual, as well as quite shy and socially awkward. His 'genius' for musical composition not being recognised by the Paris Conservatoire where he studied, and spend much time in later life writing and sending vitriolic and profanely blunt letters to people who had crossed him one way or another. After his death, his apartments were left in a state of untidiness and unhygiene, and many compositions that had been thought of as being lost or ones totally new were found amongst a large collection of umbrellas and bric-a-brac.
The film was beautifully and lovingly filmed in black and white and was entirely without dialogue. In fact there were only two people ever shown on screen. One, Alex Metcalfe, playing Erik Satie; portraying him as a broody, pensive, curious individual; and the other was Kylie Gobareau who briefly was shown as the famous post-impressionist painter Suzanne Valadon, Satie's only really one true love. They had a brief but passionate affair. Using quick cutting from image to image, slanted and unusual angles, and varying the film with close-up and wide angled shots, with images of nature, ideas and stimuli which Satie kept returning to for inspiration, the film felt a little disjointed but deliberately so. A voice-over narration, in French, ostensibly the voice of Erik Satie himself, but certainly speaking Satie's own words accompanied and complemented the images on screen. The Englsih translations was given much in the same way essential plot and dialogue were given in the old silent films, as a black card between shots.
Alex Metcalfe was also on stage at the International Anthony Burgess Foundation this evening where this presentation was taking place. Dressed as he was in the film, as Erik Satie, he sat at a grand piano to one side, and played Satie's music as the 'soundtrack' to the film. Technically this was superbly realised as the music and film were timed to perfection, and the music did indeed ameliorate and expand the narrative complimenting it superbly. I am just unsure of the need of having had it played live by a Satie look-a-like! Metcalfe's playing was wonderful and faultless, but am struggling to understand why it was played live, or even needed a 'theatre' space for the presentation. The rest of the theatre space was not used at all.
All in all, this film event, directed by Keith Lovegrove, was little more than an interesting experiment which, despite being beautiful and atmospheric, didn't quite pay off. The film stayed at the same level dynamically throughout, and Satie's music was, apart from one moment of extemporised cadenza madness, soft and melancholic throughout. As a documnetary of Satie, it didn't quite work, but perhaps this was more of an 'homage' to Satie, in a style that would have appealed to him... avant-garde, slightly minimalist, repetitive, and highly phonometric!
Reviewer - Matthew Dougall
on - 27/7/19
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