London

London is a 1992 documentary by Patrick Keiller. It is suppose to be a reflexive journey documentary, however, it is not like most journey documentaries or travelogues. In this documentary, the audience gets to see the travels and hear the thoughts of two middle aged men. One man is the narrator. His profession is a cruise ship photographer. The narrator talks about his journeys with another man named Robinson. Robinson teaches fine art and architecture part time at Barking, which is a college that no one has ever heard of. The audience never gets to see either of these men which is extremely unusual. Not only are these men telling the story, but the entire documentary is about them and their travels. The audience never gets to see who the subjects are though. As a result of the mystery subjects and Robinson working at an unknown college, London is considered to be a mock travelogue. These men are not real people and they did not really go on this journey.

To go along with the unreal characters separating London from other normal journey documentaries, there are several other reasons why London is viewed as an avant-garde, or experimental, documentary. Most travelogues or journey documentaries try to make people want to visit by showing the beautiful side of the place and the notorious attractions. London, however, does not make people want to visit. In this documentary, there is nothing beautiful about London. Keiller shows the bad parts of the city instead of the popular places.

The way Keiller goes about filming London is unusual as well. The images do not match the narration. They only match nominally. At one point in the film, the narration is talking about romanticism. The image that is shown during this narration is a shot of McDonald's in a construction site. No relevance whatsoever. There are long periods periods of silence in the film as well. Keiller uses non-synchronous sound. An example of this is when Keiller shows the image of water, but instead of hearing rippling or splashing noises that water would normally make, the audience hears birds chirping.

Throughout this film, Keiller utilizes titles. However, it seems as if these titles are randomly thrown in. Titles are generally suppose to be important and introduce what is going to happen. In London though, the titles have no importance since they are only talked about for a few seconds.

Basically, Keiller is giving his opinion of London through the narrator who is talking through Robinson. It is a detached documentary film because it does not make the audience feel anything.