A nonlinear narrative is all very good, but it's rare to Þnd one that works, especially in a medium as linear as video. Work, Rest, and Play is such a rarity.
The scene is Nowheresville, Scotland, a place deÞned only by the fact that our young hero, a nameless joyriding Nintendo kid in his early teens, wants to leave it. And leave it he does. There's no explanation, no exposition, just this kid and his (presumably stolen) car. We follow him as he heads out of town with only a tattered copy of J. G. Ballard's book Crash for a guide. But it's a good guide, for what Work, Rest, and Play gives us is a psychic map of "road-movie culture" for the '90s, an update on Ballard's byway topographies of the 1960s.
The kid is nominally looking for a guy called Frank. Frank, a character culled from the Þlm Get Carter one of the bleakest and most violent British movies ever made is a '90s Everyman, a shadowy Þgure who is everywhere and nowhere, cutting his construction deals (and his coke), partying in tacky nightclubs, following his prick. While everything has changed in the intervening 25 years the landscape is now Þlled with the paraphernalia of digital media, computer images blur the distinction between fantasy and reality, and driving is just another videogame everything also remains the same the same people get fucked over, the same people persist in the networks of power, and the same lies pollute the mental and physical environment.
Work, Rest, and Play is ambient video. It sets a mood, presents sequences of images, and allows a story to slowly bubble up to the surface of the experience. As the Radio Passion DJ whispers into the ether: "These days you can be on the road and at home at the same time. What more could any grown-up kid want?"
Work, Rest, and Play, directed by Doug Aubrey and Alan Robertson: playing soon in theaters worldwide. Film and Video Umbrella: +44 (0171) 831 7753, email umbrella@cityscape.co.uk.
STREET CRED
Synthetic DreamsThe Wright Stuff
Psychic Road Movies
Back to the Future, Acoustically
