OF TIME AND THE CITY

Liverpool makes most people think of the Beatles. A few might also remember that Liverpool used to be one of the global capitals of shipbuilding, a prosperous harbour, even a significant and radiating trade metropolis. This splendour has long faded, and the 1970s saw the town being afflicted by unemployment, crime and the entire force of Thatcherism, all of it ruining the city – almost. By 2008, Liverpool had made a small comeback and was named "European Capital of Culture", and to celebrate this, the city commissioned a portrait by its most famous filmmaker. Of course, did Terence Davies fulfil the expectations in his most idiosyncratic manner? No. His essayist portrait – packed with rich material and cultural references – tenderly and lovingly embraces his hometown, and wipes away the makeup. Davies shows Liverpool's former misery, its architectural ugliness, the poverty of its proletariat, while passing over the glorious times, instead talking about the city in which he grew up – and how. And in the dramatically intoned voice-over spoken by Davies himself, we hear equal measures of pain and love.