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I had stood on an unfamiliar street corner, awaiting their arrival. The city, although my home for two months, was still a stranger to me. We'd begun coalescing with no real understanding of one another, and indeed it turned out this street corner was one only a couple of hundred yards from where I'd been stood the previous night, totally unaware of what was ahead of me. Soon I'd be greeted by a tall and striking man with a candour and integrity far beyond his years. Sassoon led me into the club and I was welcomed into the world as an honorary member for the day. Full of admiration for the work, and articulating every point with eloquence, he led me to a quiet corner of the club to discuss the potential of the piece. Soon we'd meet the eccentric and daring Robert Graves, and begin plotting how we'd put our artistic mark on the landscape of this volatile and unpredictable world. Of course, this was no hallucination, but for a moment I felt a little like Wilfred as I talked about the script for The Burying Party with two of the main stars of the piece, playing Sassoon and Graves respectively. And it's London where we'd met, as opposed to Edinburgh. I'd never met S before, but had visited his work in order to make a casting decision (that I'm currently not allowed to announce out of respect and contractual duties). The meeting confirmed everything I'd hoped. Will is our Graves, and looks every bit the part. A poet himself, and a very good one at that, he possesses the natural electricity and command of language needed. I handed him my copy of Goodbye To All That, (Graves' autobiography and essentially his eulogy to the era in question). Despite my aversion to astrology, it's difficult not to remark that the stars seem to be aligning. The nature of The Burying Party is that it not only marks a significant centennial, but it also reflects the nature of today's volatility. I recently read Jeremy Cliffe's powerful piece Inside Europe in the New Statesman. Briefly, it describes the meeting of 25th March summit, where EU leaders came together to discuss the future beyond Brexit at the Palazzo dei Conservatori in Rome. A 60 year anniversary, and one that saw students, police officers and anti-EU protestors clashing in the streets. This scene is sadly an unremarkable one at the present time, as the political landscape becomes a little like Middle Earth. Very recently, far-right parties became frontrunners across Europe. A cohort of reactionary leaders, namely Geerts, Le Pen and Hofer, were poised to drag Europe back into the chaos of World War nationalism and fascism due to the rise of pluto-populism and the antics of an orange monster across the pond. However, there is a resistance. There are people and ideas that swoop under the radar of the press and the pollsters. Only last month, the UK's second monumental political shake up within a year took place. Since 1979, neoliberalism and its austerity-based denominations have taken hold of power. Yet somehow, 38 years later, the people refused to hand a majority to the Tory government, giving a revitalised and crucially anti-austerity party a foothold in the House of Parliament, the same place Sassoon was reprimanded for his infamous antiwar speech. 'Time is a flat circle' springs to mind from Rust Cohle of True Detective. But Cliffe speaks of the "widening gyre" in Yeats' poem The Second Coming: "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold". The gyre spirals in a cone-shape, the pattern rises to meet its apex before following the same pattern back down, only inwards. We have been through this before, and France, Austria and the Netherlands managed to reject the far-right. Germany looks to be doing the same. The beast is being batted off. Common sense is starting to creep back in. Whatever your politics, Corbyn was right when he spoke of 'in every child there is a poem'. And in Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon and Robert Graves, they had poems that challenged the apocalyptic landscape of their time. Lines such as 'Dulce Et Decorum Est' and 'Red lips are not so red as the stained stones kissed by the English dead.' will live on to stand the test of time. With our film we intend to depict the nature of the 'widening gyre', and illustrate the absolute necessity of artists and progressives to cast light in times of darkness. I left the meeting with S and Will, and began the journey toward Stratford. I bid them both a fond farewell, organising our next steps toward production. As I walked past through the balmy midsummer evening, past the parks and down the familiar streets toward home, I was thrilled to know a single script seems to have spurred many like-minded people at once, at a remarkable time of anniversary and in a remarkable year of the world's history. Once a stranger, I now feel more like a citizen; it is the mark we make in our participation that makes our visit here worthwhile. I've started to come to a better understanding of Owen's own affirmation - in the enthusiasm and ideas of others he found a purpose to his work. To invoke Auden, I, the stranger, had somehow bought right to take the shuddering city in my arms. Wilfred Owen warned us, but partnered with his life, the life of his contemporaries, his unique vision and indelible literary mark, he has once again galvanised a collection of artists to create their own variation on a timeless and essential message. Here's to that Wilfred Owen film #wilfredowenfilm https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1375078667/the-burying-party  Calton Hill in Edinburgh, a place where Graves, Sassoon and Owen gather, and one of the many locations of The Burying Party  - Richard Weston, Writer and Director of The Burying Party
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 The resting place of Lieutenant Owen During our various discussions about the direction of The Burying Party, one question does stick in my own mind as pretty fundamental. What would Wilfred Owen have got up to if he had survived the war? It is often a question I have applied to other cultural icons of mine such as Hendrix say. It’s a tough ask in all cases. There is no empirical reason that can be applied. We have no evidence after death, only the testimonies of those who knew the man. The problem, as Hilary Mantell so eloquently explained in her recent Reith lectures, as soon as someone dies they become the myth we want them to be in our own heads, albeit based on our own realities. When my dad died, it was a very personal tragedy of course and there was no doubt that he was a lovely man. However my interpretation of his life will be coloured by my own fond memories of going fishing on the River Conwy, teaching me how to bowl and those Christmas dinners at Bidston. My mum’s will be coloured by hers. My sister has lived eight years longer than me, so she was the only child until the naughty kid brother arrived. Only recently we lost the legend that was John Noakes. Immediately we look skyward for answers. Our visions of our beloved John are festooned with the ascent of Nelson’s column in casual shoes without a harness, the near fatal parachute jump, ‘down Shep,’ and various other favourite TV moments that made our childhoods of that era special. Yet John himself would probably be just as ready to point to the friction that occurred in that period between he and his Producer Biddy Baxter, the horrendous contract he was forced to endure, culminating in the row which saw him nearly separated from his beloved dog. The sources for much of Wilfred Owen’s life were derived from brother Harold. Even the major autobiographies by Hibberd and Stallworthy cannot ignore Harold’s efforts to record his legacy. Yet, Owen is not here to dispute certain interpretations of what it was really like to go to Birkenhead Institute and living in and around that industrial town during the Edwardian era. Harold was deeply unhappy there, so tradition follows then that Owen was too. Without any documents to counter these reflections other than school reports and additional spurious evidence, Harold’s recollections in tranquillity will have to do. But should we accept them? As film makers, we will be as guilty as anyone else for placing our conveniently protective net over a man who was described by Dominic Hibberd as ‘deeply complex.’ However there are certain constants we can dare to assume as facts. We have the precious poetry which, whilst open to literary criticism, does give us an insight into what Owen himself described as the ‘pity of war.’ We know that Owen re-entered the fray not as a poet in some twee observational role, but as a soldier, an officer in charge of a platoon of men all wanting to go home to their families as soon as it was all over. Here though is an analogy from a totally different world to illustrate the dilemma. When Pink Floyd were stroking their chins recording the album ‘Wish You Were Here,’ applying lyrics to the enigmatic anthem, ‘Shine On You Crazy Diamond,’ in walked their troubled alumnus, Syd Barrett to whom the song was dedicated. All four members recall cringing that when asked ‘what’s the song about?’ all confessed to being imposters. In fact the majority of Nick Mason’s recollections were dismissed by fellow band mate, Roger Waters as ‘rubbish’ when he inspected the draft transcript. These five men were still on this Earth at the time. So what chance have we got trying to interpret a time of a dead poet who lived when trenches in some foreign field became home, guns were a necessary appendage and the Bible was still a strong influence on many young men growing up? Even autobiographies can be tainted with some form bias, a desire to make oneself look good, to cast out the nasty myths that have haunted the writer in a lifetime in the public eye, the desire to elevate the author’s side of the story above anyone else’s memory of events. My only connection with Owen and that of our Producer, Neil Perriam is that I went to the same school as the lad. While empathy can help us to understand the psyche of a soldier, empathy itself is fraught with all sorts of problems. And yet we feel that empathy does help us as film makers. If you have to leave a dear friend (Sassoon) despite his deep protestations, how difficult a decision would that be, given that Owen firmly believed that dying for your country was a not an honour but a motor for propaganda? Dulce et Decorum Est Pro Patria Mori. Once you are there in this huge Theatre of War witnessing the constant barrage of machine gun fire, shells, explosions, would you half-heartedly fire a gun at a German hoping you would miss? Owen killed people. Let us understand that. Sassoon and Owen killed Germans. At The Battle of Joncourt in the previous month, Owen did not turn a German machine gun around and fire it at the sky whilst they tossed garlands of Edelweiss in his direction as a symbol of their thanks for sparing their lives. We shall probably ruffle feathers, but we will also be grounded by The Why. The question posed in my opening paragraph, was what would Owen have done with his life had a he survived? Personally I believe he would have turned his hand to plays and prose. He would have become a great writer, not just the most accomplished war poet. My evidence? It is scant as I hope my disclaimer embedded in this article clarifies. He had the knack though of breaking conventions, questioning the norm and demonstrating words with deeds. For those reasons alone, he deserves our attentions as we head towards the 100 anniversaries that ultimately led to his death on November 4th 1918.  Keith Thompson, Sine Wave Media Ltd: Producers of The Burying Party (to be released 2018). Huge news yesterday saw Will Burren cast as Robert Graves, Wilfred Owen's friend and fellow artiste More casting announcements to come in the next few weeks.   Wilfred's image was always there like the Mona Lisa stare. He was like an extra teacher. Those eyes checking on the pupils, approving, disapproving, empathising. Being a BI pupil you were never allowed to forget the association with its most famous alumnus. Lenny Malcolm, Mike Murphy, John 'Bert' Allen and other teachers were rightly citing him at the appropriate opportunity. A film about Wilfred Owen was inevitable at some point.
At the time, it was more of case of having to learn Dulce et Decorum Est and Anthem for a Doomed Youth mainly because it was on the curriculm. In truth, I didn't really have an affinity with World War One at the time. My dad was in the Russian convoys in World War Two, so naturally I used to pour through his photos, hat and naval ephemera. Aside from bits and pieces in a history degree, it wasn't until a couple of years ago when another BI alumnus and school friend of mine, Neil Perriam had posted on Facebook about his forays into the World war One battle zones searching for BI fallen that my own latent interest was sparked into life. I wasn't sure whether it was Rich's cup of tea. He had been an award winning film maker from an early age but his own journey was via the apocalyptic route of three movies depicting life after the Big Bang. Then I thought wait a minute, that's not a bad segue into this subject matter! Many contemporary commentators did indeed think this was the end of the world as they knew it. Wilfred Owen was not the original target for a film subject actually. As Rich, Neil and I traversed the killing fields of the Somme, visiting the graves of the fallen, my mum's uncle (a later discovery) William Warr who fell on the first day of the Somme, it wasn't until we took a considerable diversion to The Forester's House at the Sambre-Oise Canal near Ors that the plan to take an angle on Wilfred was hatched. Along the way, we have met some really pleasant people. The Canadians at Newfoundland Park who conduct themselves with such courtesy, Michelle Preddy (professor of English at Jules Verne) and enjoyed the hospitality of The Greens at their house in Brackel, Belgium. Lucy London at the Wilfred Owen Museum in Birkenhead. Neil's list is more extensive over his eight year research journey. What is patently clear is that we need to make this film on Wilfred Owen. Funding or not, we will be doing this film to the best of our ability in a fashion that best befits, in the words of one of his major biographers Dominic Hibberd "a deeply impressive man," if a complex one. Roy Hattersley when reviewing Hibberd's book in The Guardian said " it's about the poetry." It is indeed, but when tracing what happened to Wilfred in 1918, we also need to know what major life events contributed to that poetry. Here's to Wilfred Owen and may our film, in small way, contribute to the impressive list of works dedicated to the man. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1375078667/the-burying-party Keith Thompson (Assistant Director) #wilfredowenfilm |
The TeamUpdates from the Sine Wave team on all things Wilfred Owen. Archives
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