FROM THE SMALL TO BIG SCREEN, HERE ARE YOUR JULY ON-SCREEN ESSENTIALS ON THE BOX
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HEAVY IS THE HEAD
MIRIAM BALANESCU SPEAKS TO KEVIN LOADER, ROGER MICHELL’S LONG-TERM PRODUCER, ABOUT THEIR FINAL FILM TOGETHER – ELIZABETH: A PORTRAIT IN PARTS
like the still point in the middle of the circle, where all this history swirls around her. A lot of that history, my whole life to date, feels like it comes from a distant era – a different world.” The grim, colonial implications of British rule, along with the Queen’s entrenched cultural significance, are brought to light. “Her life has connected the whole 20th century,” says Kevin. “It was always going to be a royal documentary that didn’t feel like other royal documentaries.” Roger and Kevin co-founded the production company Free Range Films in 1996 and made several films together. “Like any marriage, it’s quite good to have some outside relationships,” Kevin says. “There are other constants in my professional life, but none of them have quite the history that Roger had.” On releasing Roger’s final film without him, Kevin says: “I feel sad he won’t get to sit with audiences to watch it. Whatever he was making, he wanted it to really affect people and immerse them. We spoke every day, and now we can’t. It does feel like a ghastly amputation in some ways.” As undergraduates at Cambridge University in the late 70s, each dabbled in the theatre and film scene – although Roger outran Kevin’s involvement. “He had the archetypical star theatre career, directing a million productions at the ADC. I saw many of those. It was extraordinary, the energy he had for new plays back then. “The big thing about Cambridge was the education of watching films,” Kevin says. “It was an era when you could go to late-night screenings of Buñuel, Renoir or Mizoguchi at the Arts Cinema. If you could stay awake between 11pm and 1.15am, you could see everything by these masters of cinema over a two- or three-week period. When you get out into the working world, you never quite find that time again.”
hen Roger Michell and Kevin Loader started Elizabeth: A Portrait in Parts in September
2020, they had little inkling that it would be swept into this year’s Jubilee furore – or that it would be their final collaboration. The acclaimed Notting Hill director, Michell, passed away one year later, wrapping up the documentary’s sound mix on the day he died. Perhaps an unlikely conclusion to his career, Elizabeth was Roger’s lockdown project. Since filming was difficult, he could stitch together archival footage instead, needing only to find the right subject. “I worked with Roger for 30 years. When he wanted to do something, I often got the first chance to join in,” says Kevin. “I wouldn’t give that up lightly.” In the tradition of montage documentaries such as Julien Temple’s London: The Modern Babylon , Elizabeth fuses jarring audio and visual elements to make each fragment sing. “The compression of time and non-chronological strategy allows you to pick out some thematic unity in her life. There are moments where she seems
A CERTAIN MAJESTY The Queen has been a figure of continuity for many, and this documentary stitches together decades of archival footage
20 JULY 2022 CAMBSEDITION.CO.UK
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