Steve McQueen
UK, 9 February; US, already released
ARTIST and director Steve McQueen鈥檚 documentary Occupied City unfolds at a leisurely pace. Viewers will welcome an intermission after 2 hours. If you need to make a fast getaway, that is your chance 鈥� but I鈥檒l bet that you return to your seat.
McQueen, a Londoner, now lives in Amsterdam with his wife Bianca Stigter, a film-maker and historian. The director of 12 Years a Slave and Shame has created another intense work, this time based on 厂迟颈驳迟别谤鈥檚 book Atlas of an Occupied City, Amsterdam 1940-1945, a monumental account of the city under Nazi occupation.
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Narrator Melanie Hyams recites the book鈥檚 gazetteer of the occupation address by address, while McQueen films each place as it appears today. Here is the street market where they handed out Star of David patches to the city鈥檚 80,000 Jewish residents: 60,000 of them were expelled during the second world war, and nearly all of those deported were murdered.
Outside a now busy cafe, someone once found a potato in the gutter and burned a book to cook it. At this site, in the 鈥淗unger Winter鈥� of 1944 to 1945, the diving boards at a swimming pool were chopped for firewood.
Though many of the buildings still stand, the word 鈥渄emolished鈥� recurs, and it is rare for McQueen鈥檚 street photography not to capture some new bit of destruction or construction. Amsterdam doesn鈥檛 stay still. So how does a living, changing city remember itself?
There are, of course, acts of commemoration, such as a royal visit to a Holocaust memorial. Other events mark more episodes in the city鈥檚 history, including a ceremony apologising for its part in the slave trade. But a city鈥檚 identity runs deeper than this. Do drinkers at this bar remember the Jewish people who were beaten outside their windows? Do the occupants of that flat know the previous owners were a Jewish couple who died by suicide rather than live under Nazi occupation?
厂迟颈驳迟别谤鈥檚 atlas is an act of remembrance. Her husband鈥檚 film is different: a snapshot of how a city survives being managed and choreographed, corralled and contained. Some of Occupied City was shot in a covid-19 lockdown. We see the modern city beset by pandemic, even as we hear how it was brought to near-destruction by foreign occupation. McQueen鈥檚 parallels aren鈥檛 facile: we are encouraged to see that restrictions are restrictions and curfews are curfews, whoever imposes them, whatever their motives.
What is interesting is how people react to civil control, as it becomes (through necessity or not) heavy handed. At a big anti-fascist rally, conducted outside the city鈥檚 Concertgebouw concert hall, a speaker announces: 鈥淒emocracy is more fragile then ever.鈥�
Occupied City would suggest not. It is about the citizenry who survived one onslaught now coping with another 鈥� not so obviously violent, but pervasive and undoubtedly lethal. A democracy鈥檚 health isn鈥檛 measured in what people believe, but how they behave. And, lo, people are mostly decent. Leave us alone, and we toboggan, skate or dance. Nightmares, riots, beatings and betrayals surface only when occupiers force us into boxes.
A spirit of anarchy pervades this work: not anti-authoritarian, but just not that interested in what authority thinks. Still reeling from covid-19, it is a comfort and a challenge to be reminded that cities are, after all, nothing more than their people.
Simon also recommends鈥�
Dziga Vertov
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Philip K. Dick (Penguin Modern Classics)
Dick鈥檚 increasingly surreal description of an America divided between victorious Axis powers far exceeds its brief as a chilling alternative history.
Simon Ings is a novelist and聽science writer. His latest book, Engineers of Human Souls, is out now. Follow him聽on X @simonings
