Tilda Swinton pays tribute to her friend John Berger in THE SEASONS IN QUINCY

THE SEASONS IN QUINCY: FOUR PORTRAITS OF JOHN BERGER (Colin MacCabe, Christopher Roth, Bartek Dziadosz & Tilda Swinton, 2015)
Film Forum
209 West Houston St.
Opens Wednesday, August 31
212-727-8110
filmforum.org
seasonsinquincy.com

I remember the first time I saw the BBC series Ways of Seeing, thoroughly entranced by the host, a curly-haired British art critic with the cutest little lisp of his “R”s who promised that, while looking at European painting in a whole new way, “we shall discover something about ourselves and the situation in which we are living.” Years later, I was distraught when I couldn’t find my paperback copy of the companion book; my wife quickly ordered it and it was soon in my hands, where I devoured every word and image again and again. So I was terrifically excited when I heard about the new documentary The Seasons in Quincy: Four Portraits of John Berger, which opens August 31 at Film Forum. Perhaps my expectations were too high, but I came away from the four-part film feeling disappointed and let down; I selfishly wanted only Berger (pronounced with a soft “g”) but instead got too much of his friends and colleagues. And to make matters worse, the directors are too often what Berger tried so hard to avoid being throughout his long, influential career: pretentious. The film begins in winter with “Ways of Listening,” in which director Colin MacCabe focuses on Berger and his longtime friend, Oscar-nominated actress Tilda Swinton, as they talk at Berger’s farm in the small French town of Quincy, where he moved in the 1970s after becoming fed up with England. Filmed in 2010, the segment works best when Berger tells personal stories about his father and war; Swinton listens while peeling apples, the camera on her as much as on him. It occasionally feels as if she can’t decide whether to share Berger or keep him to herself; they already have a special connection, sharing the same birthday, albeit thirty-four years apart. But I wanted to make my own connection with Berger, a down-to-earth intellectual with a lust for life and a wide-ranging legacy, an artist, critic, “radical humanist,” social commentator, political activist, husband, father, farmer, and self-described “revolutionary writer” who prefers to simply be known as a storyteller.

In “Spring,” Christopher Roth focuses on Berger’s comparison of humans and animals, explored in his essay “Why Look at Animals?” But Roth’s blending of shots of nature with members of his crew, other farmers, and Jacques Derrida are disjointed, attempting too hard to create the kind of poetry that simply rolls off Berger’s tongue. The section also delves into time and death; sadly, Berger’s beloved wife, Beverly Bancroft, had recently passed away, in 2013. “Every shepherd knows that the herd outlasts the herdsman,” Berger says in a 1980 clip from Mike Dibb’s Parting Shots from Animals. For summer’s “A Song for Politics,” directors MacCabe and Bartek Dziadosz head indoors for a political discussion featuring Berger with MacCabe, German artist and director Roth, Indian poet and activist Akshi Singh, and American novelist and poet Ben Lerner. Berger makes some fascinating points, but I was hoping to see and hear more from him instead of from the others on the panel. “Let’s be quite clear,” Berger says, gesticulating with his right hand, “hope has nothing, nothing to do with optimism.”

John Berger and Tilda Swinton go on an intellectual journey in THE SEASONS IN QUINCY

The ninety-minute film concludes with Swinton’s fall-set “Harvest,” in which the actress and her twins, Xavier Swinton Byrne and Honor Swinton Byrne, travel through the Scottish Highlands to Quincy and meet up with Berger’s son, Yves, a painter and farmer. Meanwhile, Berger talks about the internet and Beverly and tells the kids to pick raspberries in her memory as such words as “from,” “via,” and “to” show up onscreen, emphasizing life’s journey. The craggy-faced Berger, who is now eighty-nine and boasts an impressive head of white hair, has a marvelous way of telling a story; his mind refuses to work like the rest of ours, interpreting and enjoying the world in unique and creative ways that are beautiful to watch and listen to. Unfortunately, aside from a smattering of marvelous bits here and there and some wonderful archival clips, this series of meandering narratives doesn’t quite do the extraordinary man justice. But then again, maybe I was just too optimistic. The Seasons in Quincy: Four Portraits of John Berger opens August 31 at Film Forum, with MacCabe participating in a Q&A following the 7:10 show on Wednesday night.