I want to say that The Arbor is one of the best documentaries that I’ve seen in a long time, but I’m not sure if that’s the case or not. Is this a documentary? It certainly has documentary elements. What director Clio Bernard is giving us is a look at the life of English playwright Andrea Dunbar, whose play “The Arbor” was a fairly autobiographical look at life in her low income neighborhood. Or, more accurately, she’s giving us a look at the ramifications of this woman’s life. She died at young age, leaving young children behind, and much of this film’s focus is on audio interviews with said children, now that they’re adults.
The interviews aren’t presented to us straight though, they’re lip synched by a cast of professional actors. And these lip synched interviews freely intermingle with video footage of the actual Andrea Dunbar when she was alive, as well as footage of another set of actors performing “The Arbor” on minimalist sets positioned in public, on the street that gave the play its name. If you think that all of this sounds really pretentious, it is. But also, it works.
Though gimmicky, the lip synching aspect of the film never wears out its welcome, and all of the other stuff is expertly edited in, not to create a sense of disorientation, but instead to color and illuminate what we’re given in the audio interviews. Dunbar’s children have had hard lives, that’s clear from the beginning, but what isn’t clear right away is just how deep down the rabbit hole of despair and abuse this story is going to take us. The Arbor has secrets, and it gives them away one at a time as it peels back its layers. Following along with the Dunbar children’s testimonials is a journey that constantly engages your attention. Too often documentaries focus too fully on just informing, and they end up coming off as interesting but dry. The Arbor worries about storytelling first, and that in combination with it’s skilled, gutsy execution manages to put it head and shoulders above the rest of the pack.
