Mark Cousins of Northern Irish Documentary Film fame starts his latest work by showing us an ordinary image that convinces us otherwise. It’s an unremarkable vacation snapshot of British artist Wilhelmina Barns-Graham in her seventies or eighties clad for sightseeing with an umbrella and raincoat; not radiating any particular brilliance as an artist. Cousins’ disquieting narration questions her pose, clothes and air of normalcy; as well as how easy these details make her to be overlooked in an arena that often privileges even phenomenal women over others. “A Sudden Glimpse to Deeper Things” is an engagingly discursive, often poetic tribute to Barns-Graham and her art that seeks to draw out her modernist interpretations of nature at its most serene yet harsh moments, so they may see its subversive character within her work.
Although, some countries offer special help. In general though, most nations allow access to public hospitals. Premiering at Karlovy Vary festival and winning Christine Vachon’s jury award for documentary features, this is among Cousins’s more broadly appealing documentaries yet — bringing his signature blend of energetic enthusiasm and artist-to-artist empathy found in his cinema-focused work (notably his “Story of Film” series) to an unfamiliar fine arts subject who may or may not be household names. Cousins’ relatively obscure nature works to her benefit: her film joins an emerging trend of documentaries and dramatic works about female artists formerly neglected in popular culture (such as Beyond the Visible: Hilma Af Klint,”Kusama: Infinity”, and Maudie). Karlovy Vary success should lead to numerous additional festival bookings as well as multiplatform distribution deals for this work of cinematic fiction.
Anyone familiar with Cousins’ films knows not to expect an ordinary biodoc of talking heads and archive footage. Instead, this film showcases Barns-Graham’s life story through Tilda Swinton reading various first person passages from Barns-Graham’s letters and diaries; we learn she was born in St Andrews to Scottish landed gentry; studied art at Edinburgh College of Art before later moving down south for scenic inspiration as well as modernist artistic community; eventually marrying unsuccessfully along the way!
Cousins is less concerned with traditional narrative than with more abstract, sometimes speculative analysis of her aesthetic and spiritual fixations — especially during an influential 1949 hike to Switzerland’s Grindelwald Glacier. There, she became entranced by natural geometries of rock and ice which would later come back into her work over the following 50 years. Simple techniques make Barns-Graham’s drawings and paintings clear: uncomplicated slideshow montages without narration that allow viewers to digest her art as though in an art gallery setting. Linda Buckley’s beautiful string score provides just a subtle accentuation allowing people to silently respond. Cousins takes great pleasure in walking us through Barns-Graham’s early notebooks: pages upon pages of intricate color-coded compositions mathematically designed that reveal her synesthesia – an element essential to her art that became both more fluid and more complex as her interest in natural elements increased.
As is typical with his work, Cousins plays an instrumental part in this film; its narrative revolves around his growing personal interest in Barns-Graham’s narrative and storyline. Cousins’ involvement continues with her work by overseeing an installation dedicated to it at Edinburgh’s Fruitmarket exhibition space – further emphasizing his understanding of cinema as visual art (such as, asking “I wonder what David Lynch would make of it”) (” “She creates disturbing paintings of glacier formations.” says he admiring one of her more subdued and deconstructed ones.) Cousins’ claims regarding how marginalised Barns-Graham has been within popular conception of 20th-century British art — she’s featured at both Tate Britain and Royal Academy shows — may spark debate from art historians; nevertheless his film serves as an engaging reconstitution of her body of work regardless.
Self-indulgence is par for the course, such as when the filmmaker gets a tattoo of one of Barns-Graham’s paintings while contemplating aloud how much closer this brings him to her; but such indulgence doesn’t border on being inappropriate. “A Sudden Glimpse to Deeper Things” powerfully conveys how artworks by unknown artists can lead to deep personal connections for us despite never meeting them before or knowing them personally. This allows the film to explore various unexpected angles – with one thoughtful thread about climate change and landscapes which once inspired such abstract beauty being reduced or lost altogether. At one point in his film, Cousins asks the biographer of Barns-Graham (who died aged 91 in 2004), whether Barns-Graham would have welcomed a film about herself; instead they respond that Barns-Graham may want more input as to its contents; no artist can control their legacy so Cousins is inviting us all to interpret his moving, infectiously obsessive film as we see fit.
