The Edge of the World & An Airman's Letter to His Mother

The Edge of the World is one of the first Michael Powell films that is worth watching, at least according to most people I know. Who know who Michael Powell is. It's fairly reminiscent of I Know Where I'm Going, in that it's about an island off the coast of Scotland, but this one is about the end of life on an island that is no longer worth living on. It was pretty short, but it didn't entirely feel like the classics that so many other Powell films would become, probably because I couldn't understand why they wouldn't have just left knowing how hard life was there. I guess other people just become far more attached to their way of life than I am. Well, ok, I mean far more attached to a more unsustainable way of life than mine. I don't live on an almost uninhabitable island of the coast of Scotland. I probably wouldn't either. Unless I had all the comforts of living in a big city, which isn't likely. They probably wouldn't have a good Ethiopian restaurant there. Also, the DVD's video and sound quality sucked supremely, and, except for the inclusion of extras (none of which I particularly felt like watching), was subpar all around.

I did actually watch one of the extras, An Airman's Letter to His Mother, a brief bit of propaganda based on a letter to the Times of London, narrated by John Gielgud. Nothing too spectacular either way, until the last frames, when it goes into a sky written angel wings, which was just too much. I am not that maudlin.