Employing stationary camera for character study, and wide-shots as well as panning shots for the Tierra del Fuego exteriors, this kind of controlled perspective from Liverpool's creators underscores the austere winter environment, which functions as the backdrop of the sailor Farrel's search for his long estranged mother in his hometown. His homeward journey leads him to discover that his mother is ill and cannot recognise him, and without staying longer, he departs to return to the cargo ship on which he works, and leaves his sister behind with money and a key-chain that reads "Liverpool".
The film's overall slow and largely stoic style bears resemblance to Tsai Ming-liang's capsules of the world's seemingly alienated individuals, and the tension it contains and withholds from the viewers is equally curious. To start with, the tension in this particular film is a result of a lack thereof, underscored by a matter-of-fact and down-to-earth mise-en-scene. The journey is not depicted in a poignant manner, the man's apparent loneliness is not taken as a contentious topic, and no huge drama is spun out of the fact that the mother no longer recognises his son. By means of a sensitive control over pacing and the sense of time, the narrative fuses itself with the natural environment, develops itself and does not end where it starts (i.e. where Farrel's character is built-up). After Farrel leaves, the camera shifts its focus to show the father and sister at work in the fields, and ends in an elliptical manner with a shot focusing on her hands and the key-chain against the sun-light. This shot recalls faintly Shunji Iwai's cinematography (in All About Lily Chou-chou) and even some of Gus Van Sant's camera (in Paranoid Park in particular) to conclude the ultimately simple tale that appears uneventful, as if it is a chance observation of nature and what happens there. The apparent plainness, achieved by precise execution, is what constitutes its poetry.
Nice review. will watch it.
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