I got infatuated with the works of Bruce Chatwin from the early 1980’s onward. It was then I stumbled over his first book In Patagonia from 1977.  I understood right away that this was something different, that there is travel literature before and after Bruce Chatwin. The stories he encountered while traveling opened up new worlds and new ways to understand and to be. It changed the concept of journey as a geographical relocation into a metaphysical, transforming activity. It made me aware that a traveling mentality is of the utmost importance for the quality of  life. That there is something very healthy in being at places you understand that you don’t fully understand. The traveler knows that his travel brings him impressions, bits and pieces, surprises and contradictions that keep his mind alert. 

In a rapid pace I devoured all his writings of the Eighties The Viceroy of Ouidah, On the Black Hill, The Songlines, Utz and finally What am I Doing Here published just before his early death in 1989. In the Nineties Anatomy of Restlessness and his photo book Winding Paths were posthumously published. The German director Werner Herzog was a good friend of Chatwin and made his book the Viceroy of Ouidah into the film Cobra Verde in 1987. Even Utz was made into a film by George Sluizer in 1992 and in 2019 Werner Herzog returned to this journey theme with his documentary Nomads: In the Footsteps of Bruce Chatwin.  

On the Black Hill is the story of twin brothers, Benjamin and Lewis, who stay put on a remote place in the countryside in Wales, while the 20th century with its two World Wars and its technological developments pass by without significantly affecting their lives. A couple of times during their lives of 80 years the possibility to step into a wider and broader context presents itself, but their inner bindings, to each other and to the place, hindered them to take the chance. The book led me, much more than the film, into a sense of claustrophobia, of an inability to journey, of a loss of the significant adventures that the potential of their lives presented. It reminded me that significant choices need to be made during the course of our lives that either open up or close the future. 

I experienced the film much more than just about life in a landscape. The director Grieve seemed to be drawn to Chatwin’s book because of the memories called forth of his own early years and of the landscape that shaped him. It is filmed with the eye of a painter. It becomes a memorable visit to a beautiful countryside, to a harsh life on rugged farmland, to a century of social and historic change. But it lacks for me the philosophical depth of the underlying issue: the strong forces that keep us on the same spot and make us unable to journey.

Rinus, Feb 2020

Photo by Emilie Crssrd on Unsplash

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