THE STORY of the collaboration between Juliette Binoche and Akram Khan in Imagine was basically a posh Strictly Come Dancing: would the non-dancing French actress be able to perform with the professional British dancer for a major stage production?
And would they fall out along the way?
Not that such a low-brow comparison was made in this chin-stroking profile of the project, filmed over its months of preparation. Some of it was easy to mock – the trust exercises, the re-enactments of their childhood memories ("I was running, running to meet my mother!" she wailed, of some skint-knee incident).
The gushy Binoche had to train hard, but Khan also had to overcome her tendency to make up her own steps. A classical Indian dancer, known for combining it with Western contemporary dance, the choreographer was a rather distant presence in this film; I got the impression he regretted the whole thing.
Although this film did show the difficulties of collaboration, there was so much floweriness that it didn't convey what they were trying to do. It wasn't just me: shown some of the work in progress, the French theatre people responded solemnly to the raw emotion, but the British ones diffidently suggested that they might like to put some words in, to, you know, kind of explain what was going on.
Khan and Binoche had some kind of fight during the rehearsals but it was all so carefully expressed in terms of their feelings that it wasn't actually clear what that was about either. And Yentob's film didn't end on the usual triumphal note, being obliged to state that "many people loved" the eventual production, "but there were dissenters" – code for terrible reviews. So bad that Bruce Forsyth would probably have had to say they were his favourites.
The creative process of the Garbage Warrior, Michael Reynolds, experimental architect, part-visionary, part-nutcase, was far more illuminating. Looking like Dennis Hopper with his white hair flowing behind him as he rode a motorbike along a dirt road in New Mexico, Reynolds is a man with a mission: to save the earth. "If humanity takes the planet down the tubes – I'm dead. I'm trying to save my ass and that's a powerful force," he cackled.
He and his team of hard-working hippies have been trying to create self-sufficient, sustainable homes for 30 years, long before it was fashionable. They have their own water and food supply built in. Some are still standing, with their walls made of beer cans (more fun to build than most) or tyres packed with dirt, which keep in heat. He claims to have had no energy bills for 20 years, even when the temperature plummets to -30C, which is something to make even the most sceptical sit up and listen. But often his experiments failed – one house ended up so hot, a typewriter melted. People sued him, the authorities cracked down and he lost his architect's license. It was, in essence, the final crushing of the 60s dream.
This inspiring film, though, ended with the happy vindication that Imagine did not. Reynolds uncomfortably put on a suit and fought to have his developments declared an experimental housing test zone where the usual bureaucracy needn't apply. And after the Indonesian tsunami and Hurricane Katrina, where his 'earthships' quickly proved their worth, his ideas no longer seem so wacky. He'd learnt to work within the system, and more importantly, showed the necessity of finding another way of living.
The full article contains 605 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
