A Son rests in a barn alongside the corpse of his dead father. Tomorrow they will journey together over Dartmoor to the graveyard.
This deeply personal work sits at the intersection of experimental documentary and artists’ moving image in documenting the artist’s exploration of their Grief through the lens of a site specific response to the Lych Way (or Corpse Road) that historically connected rural settlements in the middle of Dartmoor with their parish burial ground over 16 miles away.
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Review by Julie C. Sheppard
This sombre documentary short, Lych: The Corpse Road, strikes a curious balance: it is both experimental and intensely intimate. It mourns the loss of a father in such a honest, frank way with a basic onscreen text announcement of his passing, and what will happen to the body the next day – – to be carried 12 miles over the moor to be buried. In the meantime, it is a night of sleep with the body of the corpse present. The brilliant use of moss and scrawny tree branches reclined on a chair is an eerie suggestion of the father’s corpse. This image is shown repeatedly using glitchy close ups: the branches as if they are the deceased’s thin, skeletal limbs, and the clumps of moss, as if the flesh of the corpse is already rotting away.
We hear the distant funereal church bells that are to be rung as the mourners approach the parish graveyard. In addition to the church bells, there is a melancholy dirge of vocals and gloomy forest sounds, and the rush and trickles of water, suggesting dismal weather as the funeral procession moves along. There is even the brief sound of a fly, over the decomposing body.
The decision to film this in grey and black and white adds a “backward looking” essence – – a film of sadness and remembrance – – a memorable, inventive piece that anyone who has lost a beloved love one can relate to, on a deeply affecting level.
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