This text appeared within the July 11, 2025 version of The Movie Remark Letter, our free weekly publication that includes authentic movie criticism and writing. Join the Letter right here.

Being John Smith (John Smith, 2024)

Since premiering in TIFF’s Wavelengths part final September, Being John Smith has been on a veritable victory lap of the pageant circuit, choosing up prizes at DOK Leipzig, the Worldwide Competition Indicators of the Evening in Urbino, Italy; and extra. The primary movie in three years from the titular British director is without delay a playful wander by a prolonged life and profession and an ample demonstration that Smith’s attribute intelligence, humor, and cinematic ingenuity proceed to seek out invigoratingly contemporary avenues of expression after greater than 5 a long time. 

After learning on the Royal Faculty of Artwork, Smith began out with the London Movie-Makers’ Co-op within the Seventies and went on to construct a splendidly heterogenous physique of labor. Privileging the quick kind, his movies mix avant-garde, documentary, and fictional modes to experiment with language, humor, and the medium of movie [Associations (1975), Shepherd’s Delight (1980-84), The Girl Chewing Gum (1976)]; discover city landscapes [The Black Tower (1985-87), Home Suite (1993-94), Slow Glass (1988-91)]; or brazenly decry political failings [the Hotel Diaries series (2001-07), Covid Messages (2020), Citadel (2020)]. 

For anybody planning a retrospective of the nonetheless underscreened movies of this experimental filmmaking legend, no centerpiece may very well be higher than his newest. The 27-minute Being John Smith is deceptively easy in each kind and content material: alternating nonetheless photos and sections of black display screen are given construction by intertitles and voiceover that relate a largely chronological account of Smith’s lifelong battle to reside with the commonest identify within the English language. However the account is as wealthy in digression as it’s in autobiography, and sophisticated by the truth that stated voiceover and intertitles more and more converse over (and even contradict) each other. 

An unruly rhythm can be established by the sonic and visible motifs (the sounds of a crying child and an old-school modem; photos of the Tate Gallery emblem, William Shakespeare, and a retro lounge) which are usually jaggedly inserted to interrupt an in any other case seamlessly anecdotal move. Class, politics, and the mechanics of filmmaking rear their heads as all the time in Smith’s movies, however these themes are additional obscured by asides on all method of cultural detritus: Lyle’s Golden Syrup, a Pulp live performance, and a broad-jawed Disney hero, to call just some. If the tone stays largely cheerful, even jovial, this temper too is commonly pierced by photos of ghostly mind scans, violent protest, and gallows humor, creating a way of on a regular basis disquiet that feels very recognizable in 2025. As in all one of the best autobiographies, and Smith’s work usually, the I isn’t removed from the We.  

I spoke to Smith this previous March in Paris, simply after Being John Smith screened at Cinéma du réel.

Are you able to discuss incorporating your self into your work? Your movies usually play with a productive pressure between autobiography and fiction. 

I don’t make aware selections; it simply appears to occur that nearly the whole lot I do comes out of private expertise. I don’t see a lot of a distinction between Being John Smith and my earlier movies, as a result of they’re all autobiographical in a way, however that movie happened from the actual fact I’ve been fascinated with my identify for fairly a very long time [laughs]. I all the time thought I might make a movie about it.

Most of my movies are about empathy and connecting with individuals. In movies like Dwelling Suite (1993-94) or Resort Diaries (2001-07), the narration is sort of a dialog with the viewer, like a one-on-one dialog, however I’m the one individual talking [laughs]. I typically really feel disenchanted when Being John Smith is proven and so they discuss it being an autobiography. For me, it’s vital that it isn’t simply an autobiography. Autobiography is a way to speak about issues that have an effect on us all. 

The place do these self-reflexive components of your work stem from?

That’s rooted within the time once I first began making movies. After I was learning movie on the Royal Faculty of Artwork, left-wing politics and structural movie had been a giant a part of issues. I began making movies at a time when it was [an] unsaid [truism] that the work you made would draw consideration to its development. There have been additionally Bertolt Brecht’s concepts round distancing and being conscious that you just’re taking a look at artifice somewhat than being drawn into an illusionistic world. However all concept apart, I similar to work the place I’m conscious of the truth that it’s bits of stuff bolted collectively.

Which is actually cinema itself.

I’m serious about enjoying with psychological immersion, but additionally reminding you that you just’re taking a look at a movie. I’ve all the time cherished storytelling and narrative. I like work that takes you out and in of that have. Lots of my associates again then had been individuals who hadn’t gone into greater training and didn’t know something about artists, cinema, or artwork usually. I wished to make work which was accessible to them. 

Textual content and language are so key to your movies that I used to be questioning in regards to the writing course of.

I’ve a love-hate relationship with language, as a result of it’s so highly effective when it comes to how one can promote individuals on what the world is. By way of precise writing, it’s very completely different in each movie. For the longer movies, I would write somewhat bit, begin to movie some materials, after which put it collectively. It’s a back-and-forth course of amongst filming, modifying, and writing. However Being John Smith was some of the easy ones to make. I principally had a textual content that was partly written round issues I had. 

The “Cease the Genocide” intertitle in Being John Smith, which I do know you see as central to the movie, is simply one of many many political statements you’ve made throughout your oeuvre. The place does that want to carry politics into your movies come from?

I don’t actually consider it as incorporating politics into the work; such issues are there as a result of they’re a part of what I expertise. If I stroll down the road and I see a little bit of pink paint on the pavement, it would make me consider the newest bloodbath in Palestine. Such small particulars can set off issues, so I wished it to return up. The opposite motive was that I made a decision some time in the past that at any time when I confirmed my work, I might say one thing in regards to the state of affairs in Gaza. I believed that I might put it within the movie, so I wouldn’t should have an argument about it later. For those who’ve received a problem with me mentioning genocide, you don’t have to point out [the film]. 

The handful of photographs of London in Being John Smith nearly appear to face for the numerous different photographs of it that seem throughout your oeuvre. What’s your strategy to capturing such an ever-shifting metropolis?  

I may simply be very simplistic and say it’s the place I reside. The movies are made within the locations the place I reside. Citadel (2020) was a view from my bed room window throughout lockdown. A lot of the movies which are observational of place should do with me having spent a little bit of time taking a look at that factor, which frequently means they’re shot from very close to to the place I reside.

It was comparable with The Black Tower (1985-87), a fiction which began from a constructing I may see from the window of the home I moved into within the early Eighties. It’s painted in such unreflective black paint that it seems like a gap minimize out of the sky. That was the preliminary impetus for filming. 

I imagine that for those who look shut sufficient, you’ll discover what you want. You don’t must go far to assemble info. Photographs are so mutable that we are able to make them imply heaps and plenty of various things. The nearer I’m to house once I make one thing, the higher, and that fairly often doesn’t even contain leaving the home. Even the movies which don’t look like they match into that Interviews are sometimes shot by home windows in different international locations. I like the thought of the window. The window body restricts your view, and I actually like limitations. I can’t work with out them; I’ll even create a proper framework to seek out them. 

Being John Smith does the identical factor, working with nonetheless photos however breaking the sample with just a few shifting ones. 

Let me generalize and say that at any time when I make a brand new movie, I need the movie to have its personal language and [hope] that the movie will educate the viewer that language. Perhaps you’re fairly disorientated by what you’re taking a look at to start with, after which after a sure level, you notice what’s going on. That’s the purpose the place I need issues to alter, the place I break my very own guidelines.

My early London Movie-Makers’ Co-op movies had been very formally extreme, with guidelines I by no means broke. I received very dissatisfied with that. I don’t prefer to make movies that are instantly classifiable inside any specific style. The Lady Chewing Gum (1976) begins off with me simply directing, after which that course strikes into description as I begin to describe characters, till I’m speaking about any person robbing the publish workplace. 

There’s one thing very playful about not permitting the viewer to get snug.

It may be a bit merciless as a result of I typically depart individuals hanging, particularly in relation to humor. In Being John Smith, I’ve received the viewers laughing, after which I begin to discuss most cancers, and folks don’t know whether or not to snigger or not. I get pleasure from creating discomfort. I see the movies as video games with the viewer, however hopefully in a approach wherein the viewer will get let in on the sport. You’re conscious you’re being manipulated. 

After I first made The Lady Chewing Gum, I bear in mind some individuals had been very vital as a result of they felt it was so manipulative. You’re filming unsuspecting individuals on the street and saying issues about them. However I’ve received no qualms about that so long as it’s actually clear that you’re really doing that manipulation; I don’t suppose it’s a giant downside. The actual downside is a supposedly empathetic documentary the place individuals actually are being manipulated and also you simply don’t realize it. 

Playfulness goes hand in hand with humor. What function does that play in your work? 

It’s a cliché, however humor is a severe factor. And some of the vital methods for me to deal with the horrors of the world is to make a joke, typically in very unhealthy style. I can’t assist it! 

I don’t got down to make humorous movies, however I’m very serious about ambiguity. Let’s take the thought of a voiceover and a picture: for those who’re informed a picture means one thing and you already know it doesn’t, then that may be fairly humorous, as a result of you’ll be able to think about it though you already know it’s a lie. In The Lady Chewing Gum, you already know that that boy hasn’t simply robbed the publish workplace, however you possibly can simply think about that he had. It’s really easy to ascribe which means to issues. And humor additionally comes again to what I used to be saying about discomfort—that’s fairly often what makes individuals snigger.

Crucial factor to me is that the humor is only a by-product of the concepts, however I’m glad that it’s there. Hopefully it makes the movies extra accessible. And when you have an viewers really laughing on the issues that you really want them to, it’s fairly reassuring.

Laughter is one thing laborious to faux. 

It’s a part of the commonality of the cinema expertise. I like going to a mainstream cinema, sitting in an viewers of individuals I don’t know and nonetheless feeling some sense of commonality, though I can’t converse to them. 

The final shot in Being John Smith is about that, too. It was really the start line for the movie. I used to be wanting down at this crowd of 35,000 individuals at a Pulp live performance and wished to be down there with them as they had been all shedding their egos; there was this wonderful sense of communality. They’re singing “Widespread Individuals,” and I’ve the most common identify within the English-speaking world, so I believed I may lastly make that movie about my identify. So I already had the ultimate shot, and it’s all the time good to have an ending earlier than you begin. 

James Lattimer is a movie critic and pageant programmer based mostly in Berlin.