One Sunday evening in 2005, Edwyn Collins, former front-man of the band Orange Juice and successful solo musician - 1994's A Girl Like You was his biggest hit - suffered a cerebral haemorrhage, a burst blood vessel in the brain.
Collins' partner Grace Maxwell returned home that day to find Collins on the floor. After six days in intensive care, the musician went into a coma and he would spend six months in hospital.
He was diagnosed with acute aphasia, which meant he was unable to talk coherently. What was more serious was the fact that bleeding might start again in his brain and he could die.
Then began the slow path back, as the musician struggled to recover memory which had been erased. He could say “yes” and “no”, or he would repeat his partner’s name “Grace Maxwell.” He repeatedly uttered the curious phrase “the possibilities are endless,” hence the film's title.
Edward Lovelace and James Hall who made The Possibilities are Endless, already have to their credit a hugely successful film about Katy Perry. They approach Collins and his illness from a sidelong route. Effectively through the first 40 minutes or so, they rely on voiceover, based on interviews with the musician conducted in 2011. Filming proper began in the summer of 2013.
As Collins struggles to talk, we see a sequence of beautiful images unfold, of the sea-tide, birds and deer, a deserted harbour, winter snow, sandy, deserted beaches, quiet green pastures and long-stemmed pink wild flowers swaying in the breeze.
Many of these rapturous scenes were filmed in the harbour town of Helmsdale on Scotland’s Sutherland coast where Collins’ family have owned a house for generations. The musician spent summers there as a young boy. “I remember the shoreline in Helmsdale, watching the seabirds wheeling and soaring, nursing a green finch back to health, “ he recalls, early on in the film.
Edwyn and Grace's 23-year-old son, William Collins plays his father as a young man in lightly re-created scenes. The actress Yasmin Paige (Submarine) plays the young Grace. They have few, if any, lines, as the real Grace and Edwyn between them do most of the talking.
Inevitably, there is the comeback gig, and Grace, while by no means a negative spirit, is realistic. “I miss the old Edwyn, there is no point lying about that,” she says. Yet in the final scenes of the film, we see the couple in their parked car, sharing a joke.
Before the stroke, Collins was positive there was no afterlife. “Now I’m not, we’ll see what happens,“ he says.
Paddy Kehoe
Edwyn Collins will visit the IFI tomorrow, Friday November 28, to take part in a Question and Answer session, following a 6.30pm screening of The Possibilities are Endless.
