stills from the film, copyright Greg Mahoney, used with permission
and subsequent collapse into a comprehensive and comprehensible whole, is shown here for what it is: an act of violence. Saints ’ Brockton cannot be reduced to one image or one narrative through the usual vehicles of expression; it is dynamically, vulnerably complex. Its existence indeed requires an interpretive device or lens, but not one that claims absolute truth. Where the saints fail, however, the film itself offers an alternative way of knowing and showing the city, both the Brockton inside the film and the historical city on which it is based. The depth of Saints ’ engagement with its setting, and its material exploration of Brockton’s buildings and relics amount to an embodied, tactile and active encounter with the city, as well as with the economic, social and intellectual forces that have shaped its continuing metamorphosis. In the dense narrative and visual style of the film we see narrative and non-narrative, interpretation and documentation, meaning and unmeaning freely intermingle. Extant and now-vanished spaces, materials and sounds overflow one another, revealing a complexity
1 Michel de Certeau. The writing of history . New York: Columbia University Press, 1988. p 281 2 Walter F. Carroll. ‘Grade crossing and electric’ in Brockton: from rural parish to urban center: an illustrated history. Northridge, California: Windsor Publications, 1989. p 53-54; S.W. Nixon, et al. ‘Sewers: Nitrogen and Phosphorus Inputs to Narragansett Bay: Past, Present and Future’ Alan Desbonnet and Barry A Costa-Pierce. Science of ecosystem-based management: Narragansett Bay in the 21st century. New York: Springer, 2008. p116 3 These section headings are from de Certeau on hagiography, p269-283 4 Greg Mahoney, filmmaker interview, 24 July 2013 5 ‘…the Life of a Saint connects two apparently contrary movements. It assures a distance with respect to origins (a long-established community is distinguished from its past through the deviation that the very representation of this past constitutes). But furthermore, its return to origins allows unity to be established at a time when the group, through its development, runs the risk of being dispersed.’ de Certeau, p272 that cannot be contained by a single, unitary narrative. Despite the efforts of its citizens, Saints ’ Brockton lives in the fullness of its history, not under the weight of it. c
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