Gideon Koppel's documentary, "Sleep Furiously", chronicles life in Trefeurig, a small community in Wales that is getting smaller every day. The town is dying and Koppel's film empathetically dies along with it. Koppel feels great sympathy for the dying village, but no sadness. It's all part of the natural order of things, he posits. The problem is that it's awfully difficult to portray slow death as anything but, well, exactly that. Oddly, while the people know that their way of life is about to expire, none of them seems overly concerned.
To add insult to injury, the school is being shut down. The townspeople assemble to decry this latest abomination, but they can't even raise a voice against it, because their fate is the same as that of the school house. One or two of them issue gentle complaints, while everyone else stares into space, apparently waiting for their maker. It's not that they have been beaten into submission. It's rather that they don't really seem to care and probably never did.
"Sleep Furiously" has no narration and no direction, other than the changing of the seasons. The star is the local rolling library. An elderly gentleman drives it around and passes out books to senior citizens. There is little doubt that this is the highlight of the month in Trefeurig. After the 17th time that we watch someone wander into the bookmobile, we are left to wonder how many more times we will watch the same scene play again.
Aside from the senior citizens, the only other people seen are ten or so little children who still go to the school, and about 20 or so younger children who pose for a photo in front of the school. My biggest complaint, besides the excruciatingly slow pace, is that the effort to merely show without comment the simple life that is disappearing is a tad phony, which goes against the honesty it tries so hard to portray. We have lots of seniors and lots of toddlers, but no people who could have possibly produced the young children. One gets the feeling that Koppel probably shooed them away from the camera because they would have destroyed the mood. Yeah, it's definitely artsy, but its manipulative way is disappointing. This is as un-furious a film as you may ever see.
| Movie title | Sleep Furiously |
|---|---|
| Release year | 2008 |
| MPAA Rating | NR |
| Our rating | |
| Summary | Documentary set in Wales shows the slow death of a small town and, while artsy, it is far more manipulative than it should be. |
