FILM OF THE WEEK
It’s Not Yet Dark
Cert: PG; Selected cinemas If you’d forgotten about the formidable strength of the human spirit, a quaking reminder has arrived. With the news feed sometimes making out that all is collapsing around us, there is a need for fare such as this arresting debut documentary from Frankie Fenton.
In 2008, 34-year-old filmmaker Simon Fitzmaurice was screening his short film at Sundance when he noticed a funny sensation in his foot. After shrugging off the limp, he sought medical advice. What he was told changed everything for Simon, his wife Ruth and their then three young children. He was diagnosed with motor neurone disease and gradually lost all physical movement apart from his eyes. The title comes from the 2015 memoir he published about his extraordinary journey.
Fenton’s film plays simultaneous roles. It charts Simon’s determination to complete a feature film — 2015’s My Name is Emily — using eye-motion technology fitted to his wheelchair. It quietly profiles Ruth, the incredible wife bearing the weight (and whose own memoir I Found My Tribe was a bestseller this summer). But the sombre, meditative recesses — drone shots of misty fields and canopies as Colin Farrell narrates extracts from Simon’s book — suggest Fenton also wants the film to be absorbed on a more profound level than a mere observational document. The result is an intimacy that is deeply moving and thought-provoking.
The Fitzmaurices are truly incredible: Simon has outlived his prognosis by years and the family remains “battered but unbroken” through this ordeal. But in the wrong hands, this film could have been an exercise in mawkish sentimentality.