KVIFF 2024: Barns-Graham Doc ‘A Sudden Glimpse to Deeper Things’
by Alex Billington
July 7, 2024
Joining the ranks of films about great artists who have been forgotten and deserve to be rediscovered is A Sudden Glimpse to Deeper Things, the latest documentary film made by the cinepahile doc filmmaker Mark Cousins (best known for his films The Eyes of Orson Welles, I Am Belfast, The Story of Film: An Odyssey). This new film is a unique and captivating look at the life of a Scottish artist named Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, who preferred to be called Willie for most of her life. It premiered at the 2024 Karlovy Vary Film Festival where it won the top prize – the Crystal Globe Grand Prix as chosen by the fest’s jury. In all honesty, it would not have been my personal pick from the competition (I prefer Loveable over this one) but this win will give it a chance to gain extra attention and, above all else, allow more people to learn about Willie. As is usual with Mark Cousins’ films, he narrates the story and integrates himself into the narrative in order to tell the story of some other artist that intrigues him. And I’m so happy I could learn about Willie.
A Sudden Glimpse to Deeper Things is Cousins’ tale of his relationship with and investigation into the life of this painter. This is such a beautiful and important story that rights the wrongs of (art) history to give this extraordinarily talented artist Willie (Wilhelmina) Barns-Graham proper time to shine. She now has a trust (their website here) which manages her legacy and her art. Willie produced so many amazing paintings throughout her life! And yet most of us have never heard of her?! How did this happen? Cousins digs into this a bit – mainly sexism in the British art community, among other reasons. Every single painting that flashes by in this I just kept muttering “wow” over and over. Magnificent work. And even later in her life in her final years, taking a dramatic turn and producing entirely unique also radical paintings that are just as striking. THIS is a real artist. SHE is truly amazing. There’s absolutely no question about that. Glad there’s now a real film about her, though I wish I could spend more time starting at her art as it goes by so quickly.
As delightful as it is to learn about Willie, the film has a few issues that hold it back from being truly great. Some of the recreations are a bit frustrating because they’re so lackluster and obviously fake. At one point, it explains that she went on a trip to the Grindelwald glacier in Switzerland in 1949 and it changed her life. She saw the world differently after that experience – painting her memory of glacier for years after. I really wish they would’ve found money to hire a specific crew to at least go to Switzerland and get some proper cinematography and dramatic shots of the glacier she visited. Even if it looks different now, Grindelwald is still spectacular. That would’ve been worth it for this film. This is such an important part of Willie’s life and yet I can’t even recall a single vibrant shot of this glacier in this. The doc also gets extremely redundant reusing that same shot of a seagull over and over. I understand that there is only so much footage to work with, especially as an indie filmmaker, but still, it pulled me out every time the exact same photo or stock video footage was shown for the 12th time. It’s hard to fill up 90 minutes, but these shots don’t help either.
Even with a few filmmaking flaws, there’s still plenty to admire about this film and I appreciate how it tries to dig into her life story, attempting to figure out who she was and why she was so inspired by this glacier. Through this curiosity we get to learn about such a remarkable Scottish artist. At the end of the day, we will never really understand someone without asking them directly, and even then, we may not ever truly know who they are/were. So even if the film cannot answer that question, I am still excited to walk away with so much knowledge of and appreciation of Willie Barns-Graham. She’s an artist we should all be familiar with, that we should be studying. I’d even hang a few of her paintings in my home if I could (this one especially).
Alex’s KVIFF 2024 Rating: 7 out of 10
Follow Alex on Twitter – @firstshowing / Or Letterboxd – @firstshowing
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