Kevin Coyne from the Irish Film Institute introduces This Mortal Coil, a month-long season of classic movies at the IFI exploring life, death and the meaning of life.
Death is a great plot device. It gave careers to Alfred Hitchcock and Wes Craven, Agatha Christie and Stephen King, and has given inspiration to countless artists, from Emily Dickinson to Seamus Heaney. How much poorer would cinema be without the swathe of crime films that depend on murder – film noir would, ironically, be killed off – or melodramas and weepies, or horror, or any number of fine examples of the craft that utilise death as a means to entertain?
Even though death hides in plain sight in all forms of artistic expression throughout human history, there are still taboos in place around discussion of the subject in everyday life, where its presence is no less insidious. We have all been touched by it and felt its sting. We have come together for wakes and funerals and celebrated those who have departed for the undiscovered country, sharing laughter and tears as we acknowledge the loss of a leaf from our family tree. Always, we remember. And yet, the idea that we will one day ourselves be the guest of honour at such a gathering is one we largely ignore and, consciously or not, do not often confront. However, accepting the plain fact of our mortality offers us the chance to come together more closely. A full understanding of our place as a link in an ongoing chain between our parents and our children offers a perspective that sometimes seems lacking in the contemporary world.
As the films selected for This Mortal Coil, a season of films running at the Irish Film Institute throughout May, show, mortality and death need not be seen as terrifying. The films explore different facets of the subject, and offer a solace that can be found in knowing that it is our actions in life that count and that these will give us a way of contributing to life after our death. This is particularly evident, in different ways, in Akira Kurosawa's beautiful Ikiru (1952) and Isabel Coixet’s My Life Without Me (2003). Jacques Doillon’s Ponette (1996), featuring an astonishing performance from four-year-old Victoire Thivisol, and Joel Anderson’s Lake Mungo (2008) focus on grief and how we integrate the absence of a loved one into our lives, while speculations on life after death include Powell and Pressburger’s A Matter Of Life And Death (1946) and Hirokazu Kore-eda’s After Life (1998).
The Irish experience of death is frequently communal and celebratory, and so the IFI is delighted to hold our first official collaboration with Seanchoíche on the topic of 'memories’. Coming together to share stories as a group on the night of May 30th is the perfect conclusion to a season that is so predicated on this other shared experience, one that may be said to define our very existence.
Hopefully, audiences will find something to take from this season. It may seem a daunting prospect, a season of films about death, but as a whole, these are warm, beautiful, and deeply moving films to be experienced together.
This Mortal Coil is at the IFI throughout May - find out more here
