Mark Cousins is most well known to film fans on this side of the Atlantic as the man behind The Story of Film: An Odyssey, which attempts to literally tell the “story” of film, or cinema, or movies, or whatever, in 15 hours. I haven’t seen that behemoth of a documentary, but based on title alone I would guess that it shares a few things in common with A Story of Children and Film. Cousins seems to have found his place as a cineaste Werner Herzog, using his soothing voice and distinctive Irish lilt to draw thematic connections between films and filmmakers where they might not be obvious. Using a wealth of clips from films from across the world, Cousins locates the most affecting (according to him) child performances in the history of cinema. He returns to ET a number of times, but also uses a number of films by international directors such as Abbas Kiarostami, Andrei Tarkovksky, or Hirokazu Koreeda.
In A Story of Children and Film, Cousins’ subject is children in film. As a framing device, he uses a shot of his own children playing in front of a marble slide to demonstrate the unique characteristics of children on film. This may not have been a brilliant idea, because real-life children have a tendency of being far less charming than their on screen representatives. Nevertheless, Cousins’ knowledge on the subject (or his researchers’ knowledge on the subject) is encyclopaedic, a trait emphasized by the “voice of God” style of narration. In a way, however, even the suggestion of omniscience in his voice can be annoying; Cousins’ has a bad habit of using the pronoun “we” in what could be read as a psychological attempt to validate his own opinions.
A Story of Children and Film premiered on Thursday, September 5, but will play again at 9:00am on Friday, September 6 at Jackman Hall and at 2:45pm on Sunday, September 15 at Scotiabank Theatre.
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Alan Jones writes about film for Toronto Standard. You can follow him on Twitter at @alanjonesxxxv.
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