I've no real idea what they were trying to achieve or how the claimed themes of land and countryside were held together. It's more like a supermarket trolley dash through the wealth of Bfi and other archives, grabbing whatever caught their attention and throwing it in. Then at the end of the dash, you look at your pile of loot and realise that the tins of sardines, boxes of pan scourers, replacement mop heads and whatever else are not really a memorable prize , but you still have to smile for the cameras and take them home.
Among the chaos, there also seems to be a bizarre fixation on grainy old black and white nudist clips, which keep re-emerging at several points during the film - to coin an old family saying "once a joke, twice a cabbage".
So despite the inclusion of several fascinating short clips, they hang in isolation, truncated from any context and with no thread linking them into a commentary. Which means these archives are still ripe for another attempt, hopefully one with a bit of structure and coherent planning for whatever direction it may choose to follow.
Among the chaos, there also seems to be a bizarre fixation on grainy old black and white nudist clips, which keep re-emerging at several points during the film - to coin an old family saying "once a joke, twice a cabbage".
So despite the inclusion of several fascinating short clips, they hang in isolation, truncated from any context and with no thread linking them into a commentary. Which means these archives are still ripe for another attempt, hopefully one with a bit of structure and coherent planning for whatever direction it may choose to follow.