That arrestingly contradictory title? It’s taken from a linguist’s game, devised by Noam Chomsky as an example of a grammatically correct but meaningless phrase: “colourless green ideas sleep furiously”.
This quiet, rhythmic, carefully-observed documentary of rural life in Wales seems absurdly far from such academic exercises – the hill-farming community of Trefurig it observes is embedded in everyday realism. Villagers debate the closure of the under-subscribed local school. Cakes are baked. Sheepdogs compete in trials. Calves are delivered in a slither of blood and mucous.
But this is an imperilled community, desperately close to becoming as non-existent as Chomsky’s colourless green ideas. The residents are mostly elderly, and the services which bind the community are astonishingly fragile: even the sign posts are falling apart. That accounts for the sleepiness.
The fury comes out in moments of small desperation, such as the frantic snuffling of newborn piglets, or the dust and ghosts of an abandoned farm. Time-lapse photography and the lack of a storytelling narration are reminiscent of the Koyaanisquatsi films, and the Aphex Twin soundtrack has a similar elusive expressiveness to Philip Glass’ work – but this is a film that gets close enough to its subjects to show their faces. Remarkable, beautiful film-making.
Text © Sarah Ditum, 2009
