I don’t know what to make of Robinson in Ruins as after viewing the film, I still don’t know what it is about. This is from its official VIFF description:

“A droll historical essay on where we’ve come from and where we may be all-too-unwittingly going, set to Vanessa Redgrave’s narration of director Patrick Keiller’s text, juicy quotations, and much refreshingly un-hackneyed landscape cinematography of England. It is also a survey of strategic assets, including the present-tense vibrations of nature.”

One of the title cards said that the film was made from the discovery of a couple of journals and 19 film canisters of someone named Robinson. The film, as narrated by Redgrave, culls some of the images from the canisters and some text from the journals to present England.

However, I was bored three minutes in. While I appreciate the gravitas of Redgrave’s voice, the text was all over the place. One moment Redgrave was talking about urban decay then nuclear weapons then urban restoration then agriculture then the financial crisis of 2008. All of this text was set to random images of the English countryside and some English villages but sometimes these images, which I am guessing was captured by Robinson, doesn’t match the narration. For example. Redgrave was discussing the finacial crisis while a spider climbing around its web was on screen.

There are times when Redgrave is silent as it just focuses on the image and it was mind-numbingly boring that I fell asleep during the film but I think it has more to do with having just flown in from a work trip and going straight to the film. But I think it was a more interesting documentary, I would have been more awake.

I think the film could have done more to explain who Robinson was for those that didn’t see Robinson in Space to which this film is a follow-up. Interviews would have been nice to break up the monotenous images or actually have images that watch the text.

Maybe someone out there can explain to me what was the point of Robinson in Ruins.