The Journey

Peter Watkins has been living in Stockholm for several years. It is from there he embarked in 1983 on a series of world tours. His idea : a film on peace. Whence several contacts with cinema professionals and pacifist groups ; trips that opened his eyes to the horrendous coexistence between peoples exterminated by famine and those who devote most of their money to the industry of war. By evading the temptation of the easy way out and circumscribing the usual locations, Peter Watkins has chosen to show, simply and clearly, in an almost didactic manner how since Hiroshima, the world continues to be in mortal danger of weapons. To show also, and this is biting irony, how the media describe the societies in which they exist. In this respect, President Reagan’s visit to Canada is a veritable “master-piece”. Peter Watkins does not add one short film to another, neither does he let one country follow another. He’s chosen an editing style interwoven with themes and “leitmotive”, often returning to such and such remark to better understand it or introduce a new dimension. A work that lasts fourteen and a half hours in all, divided into nineteen chapters, around forty-five minutes each. A long sinuous thread that knits one country to the others, one theme fusing into another, from the horror of the bomb to a moment of tenderness about a young japanese pianist. Mozambique, Great Britain, West Germany, Japan, Mexico, Polynesia, France, Norway, USSR, USA, Australia, New Zealand, Canada…So many countries in which Watkins put to use patiently and stubbornly his immense talent as a film maker. Through direct reportage or reconstitution of events filmed like a reportage, The Journey is a slow and firm reflection accompanied by emotions of a rare force.