Book Review: The Film Club by David Gilmour (2008)

The premise of David Gilmour’s The Film Club is reason enough to read this book: he let his 16-year-old son drop out of high school on the condition he watch three films each week with his father.  It’s a good reason, but it’s not the best.  Gilmour is a writer and a father, and his insights about both things make this memoir far more memorable than another quirky experiment.  His insights about filmmaking and how to watch films are the icing on the cake.

At heart this is really a story about fathers and sons, and what really shines through is how much Gilmour adores his son.  At times it’s actually to his son’s detriment (I think there’s some parallel to be made with Jesse’s infatuation with cocaine), but the honesty in Gimour’s writing and his willingness to disclose his own desperation make us sympathetic as readers.  When he reflects on the nature of fatherhood and watching your child outgrow the need for you he says the experience ”can loosen your teeth if you let it.” 

When Gilmour settles in to discuss films, the book falls together.  We’re able to relax from the conflicts in Jesse’s life (girls, jobs, ennui) and in Gilmour’s (wives, jobs, Jesse) and in our own to look at what’s happening beyond what we normally see on the screen.  It’s a sleight of hand since Gilmour is limited to words, but he does it.  Like the best critics, he brings to life what we didn’t know was there upon first viewing, like his commentary on Brando with the glove or James Dean with the hand sweep.  He shows us how he helped Jesse escape for a little while, but he also tried to let the movies make subtle points about life.  Like the morning after Jesse had tried cocaine he shows a scene that deals with innocence leaving and tells him that with cocaine it always ends like that.  Gilmour isn’t didactic, offering instead what he calls “little apple slices of reassurance”.  He reveres the intricate nature of filmmaking and the power of stories to convey things that can be said in other ways.  In that way his experiment is important–it allows Jesse to see for himself what life is and what it’s not, and more importantly, what he wants his own story to be.

When describing Audrey Hepburn singing “Moon River” in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Gilmour says, “it is an example of what films can do, how they can slip past your defenses and really break your heart.”  That’s a good description of this book, too. 

Etc.:

• CBC review and profile
• Links from Gilmour’s site, including a video interview with he and Jesse

[Via http://dustyhum.wordpress.com]

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