‘After’: a 9-minute documentary that tried to kill me
We don’t talk about grief properly. And it’s only when I turned the camera on that I started to understand why.
I had a question when I started this little (but big) documentary film project about grief. And it’s not the one you think. Most people see a personal grief project like this as a way to ‘process’ or ‘heal’, so that when done — I finished it officially last week—I would get some form of ‘closure’. A horrible word that. But ‘have I got closure?’ wasn’t the question. The question was: ‘Is this film going to kill me?’ Because it felt like it had some kind of intent right from the start.
I had never made a film before and I was grieving while I made it, which wasn’t a great combination. It’s just the world moves on so quickly when someone you love dies. Too quickly; it is brutal. You expect the rivers to dry up, the oceans to pause and the sparrows to fall silent, but they don’t. They all carry on just as normal. You’re suddenly back on the work commute and sending emails again as you fast-blink your way through the rage and indignity of it all.
I made this film for everyone who feels that the world moves on too fast after someone you love dies. I wanted to slow it all down. And I wondered: how do you make something that is so common to us as people, but so unique to us as individuals, feel unique?
I wanted to preserve something in this dreadful void and use the eulogy I wrote for mum to do that. I would capture something for keeping: something honest, authentic and heartfelt. It would be mine, but it would be yours, too. It would show that our loved ones are all around us even when they’re gone. Is grief for loving? Can I profile her as a gentle and kind force? Can we be friends? These things were on my mind. I did recognise the risk of embarking on something so personal; I knew that it jarred with our traditions that say grief is private.
Which angers me. You suffer in the silence of this taboo when you pack up a life, with its stage-managed precision, and move on. I wasn’t ready. So, I headed to mum’s house in Rutland after her sudden death armed with my Black Magic Pocket Cinema Camera and microphones, with a desire to capture her space, her life and her essence but without her around anymore. How this played out is documented clearly in the film.
The film, which is only 9 minutes long, hurt me in ways I couldn’t have imagined. I got thrown around by grief and things started happening in my life that I believed — in a paranoid way — to be triggered by the film. Firstly, in 2020 we entered a lengthy legal battle against the Dutch government after they removed my wife’s sick pay benefits (she has a chronic condition, ME/CFS) during the pandemic. This was an awful, cruel slight. We beat them in the High Court last August, but it took us almost four years.
All the while I left the footage from the house on a hard drive gathering dust. Occasionally, I would open up the files and drop myself peacefully back into her home, to escape. The pressure of the film process — and with it, honouring mum — was breaking me apart. I had bouts of anxiety and panic attacks along the way, as I battled with grief, work and caring duties. I wrote about this. I twice visited the GP after long spells without sleep. Outside, I told people that I was getting energy from the film. Not true.
I wanted to stop, but it felt like a fatal embrace and that a defeat for me would be a win for grief. Eulogy became the working title of the film, I started making mock posters and scribbled possible themes on PostIts in my room. ‘Is this about longing?’ or ‘Is this about absence?’ I raised the bar on grief and planned to include sound design, a colour grader and I hired a friend to design a film poster. This meant I needed to ask family and friends for support: a Kickstarter would follow in April. Soon after that I got a detached retina in my left eye and went into surgery in Amsterdam. Mum, is that you? Should I stop? I posted updates to my backers through one eye.
And the story kept evolving, morphing from this very personal, intimate family tribute to something quite different. In my rough cut, I had shots of mum from her life as a mother of five to her latter years of travelling. At the death, we took them all out; we removed all mentions of her, and all images too. Suddenly she was gone, again. And then as we closed in on the finish line, when funding was secured, came the ultimate hit: Dad died suddenly in Ireland. I had this awful Russian doll moment where I was editing a film about mum’s death while dad was in ICU. Layers of grief and guilt followed.
This all felt beyond self-indulgent by the way — I’ll admit that — utterly self-indulgent. But also vital and relevant, and not just for me.
My friends and family, who rallied to support this film, messaged me with their own stories about the strange emptiness that grief opens up, the responsibility of arranging ‘things’ — what is trash and what is treasure? — and the big hole in your heart. I was very lonely in that house, and I was in it for four years. And then suddenly I had company. By sharing my story, people shared their own grief with me. I didn’t know; we hadn’t talked about it before. Because we don’t. Shhhhhhh…Grief stays quiet.
It’s a form of madness to continue doing something that causes you actual physical and mental harm, but I wouldn’t stop. The setbacks made me wonder whether I had taken on too much—my wife said as much—or that I was being punished for breaking the taboo. The pain was bound up in the film process, and I pressed on. Maybe the film is better because of it, but I wouldn’t recommend this pathway to anyone else.
It is a personal battle you do with grief; an enormous endurance test, and a test of your character on every level and I am none-the-wiser today. It pulls you slowly apart — it breaks you — and it puts you back together again. You change, for sure, but whether you know it or not is another matter.
The marathon does not end and the idea of ‘closure’ is for the birds. This will hurt forever; but it will get easier. I promise.
And so, after all.
I’m standing by the door of mum’s house in Rutland; it’s time to say goodbye. The sun has set, and the sparrows are watching me from the trees, with their beaks closed. I’ll take these lessons onto a new project. But I’m left wondering: is personal grief for filming? Or is the cost too high? Am I better prepared for when her waves come crashing down? I don’t think so. I respect her power more—it is totally overwhelming — and that alone is progress. I’m walking over the gravel again with the stones crunching under my feet. I’ll pass the church in Egleton in a moment and then I’ll be gone. And I won’t look back. Grief didn’t break me; she won’t break you.
