Liverpool Story (2024) The Pool of Life

This is a documentary portrait of the year in the life of a city, Liverpool. Directed by Daniel Draper – the man behind a string of documentaries including Nature of the Best, a profile of veteran socialist Labour MP Dennis Skinner, and The Big Meeting about the annual Durham Miners Gala, as well as two films I have previously reviewed for The Geek Show, Almost Liverpool 8, which explored Toxteth, and Manifesto, which followed Labour activists in Walton in the run up to the 2019 General Election – it is an observation of the city and the people who call it home, be they born and bred Scousers or from elsewhere, across 2023.

Liverpool Story opens with a quote from Henry David Thoreau: “Liverpool is the pool of life, it makes to live. Time is but the stream I go a-fishing in. I drink at it; but while I drink I see the sandy bottom and detect how shallow it is. Its thin current slides away, but eternity remains”. From there the screen fades up to showcase from the murky depths of the River Mersey. It’s a fitting scene-setter, as the film sets out to explore time in the city, in every one of its postcodes, in the same way that the Mersey flows through it. All life is here, and indeed I was often reminded of another quote whilst watching, that of Carl Jung: “Liverpool is the pool of life, it makes to live”

It’s perhaps easier to say what Liverpool Story isn’t, rather than what it is. Anyone expecting the usual popular heritage tropes of the Beatles legacy or football will perhaps be disappointed. It’s not a film that approaches the city from the outside in, from strangers who only know it for four young men who first made a name for themselves sixty years ago of the highs and lows of its two football clubs. Instead, it’s a story told through the eyes of the people who live there. A story that depicts Liverpool itself as a character. As one contributor suggests, Liverpool is like a woman of a certain age, propping up a bar and reminiscing about the good old days when she was attractive. Another refers to it as a living organism, asking us to look beyond the glass and concrete and respect it as we would a fellow human. It’s a comment that chimed with me; whilst Liverpool has some way to go before it loses its soul to the developers who have turned its neighbouring rival Manchester into the skyscraper-laden “Manc-hattan”, paying lip service to an industrial heritage and a sense of civic identity whilst, at the same time, bulldozing its last vestiges of character and prioritising profits over people, it ought to serve as good advice for the city to pay heed to.

Draper has paid heed. Not for him the lairy nightlife and tourist traps of Matthew Street, the bustling Liverpool One, the city’s unofficial third cathedral (to capitalism), the boujee gift shops and cafeterias of the Royal Albert Dock where once stevedores and dockers broke their backs, or the rising yet transitory hipster communities around the Baltic Triangle and the student end of town. Some of the best moments in Liverpool Story are when he trains his camera on the independant pockets of Liverpudlian culture that feel timeless and whose hearts are still very much beating; the snooker and bingo halls, the cosy pubs like Ye Cracke (paying host to Morris Dancers), Peter Kavanagh’s and Hobo Kiosk, the many greasy spoons serving hearty food of various cuisines, a fishmonger in Mossley Hill, traditional barbers, popular tattoo parlours, and the various places of worship dotted throughout the city for its many multi-faith communities. It’s in these ebbs and flows that Liverpool Story, Draper’s most abstract movie yet, finds its satisfying groove. Locals will play the guessing game of where exactly what’s depicted on screen actually is. Outsiders will make a point of seeking those places out on their next visit.

Recalling to mind Terence Davies’ 2008 ode to Liverpool Of Time and the City or the Robinson films of Patrick Keiller (minus the narrator guide character), Draper’s film offers a series of snapshots over the many and varied small communities that make up what we know as Liverpool. It’s in this microcosm that the film’s main preoccupation and identity develops. What makes Liverpool Liverpool? Well, it’s these ostensibly diverse communities. It’s multiculturalism and humanity. As activist Chantelle Lunt is heard to say on the steps of St George’s Hall during an anti-fascist protest, the Scouse accent itself is a testimony to the Irish, Welsh and Norwegian immigrants who first made their home in the city. Liverpool is a city that bonds together and looks out for one another. It’s there on that very demo, whose passions Draper captures, or on the (weekly) march for Palestine in which, I’m sure, my head briefly bobs past the camera (!), and it’s there in the Palestinian flag worn by one tipsy old timer enjoying the St Patrick’s Day parade march by. That parade is contrasted by a march by the Orange Lodge four months later but, just like the football teams of Liverpool and Everton, the divisions in this town are only superficial. All are united in calling Liverpool home.

With Liverpool Story, Draper once again continues his commitment to showcase the realities of a city often called upon to be elsewhere on screen, be it the Gotham of The Batman or the 1940s New York of Captain America: The First Avenger. One of an exciting community of homegrown filmmakers on Merseyside, his production company Shut Out The Light Films (which he runs with partner and producer Christie Allanson) is admirably self-funded, using the profits made from one film to mount the next. A fluid and authentic love letter to the city he calls home, Liverpool Story once again marks Draper out as both a remarkable documentarian and a cinematic artist.

Liverpool Story received its premiere at the Grade II listed Liverpool Philharmonic Hall on 21st November. Further upcoming screenings include Liverpool’s Fact Picturehouse on Monday 25th November, the Glasgow Film Theatre on 2nd December and the Liverpool One Odeon on 3rd December. I’m sure more will follow and, if it’s playing near you, I recommend it.

Mark’s Archive – Liverpool Story (2024)