Further Beyond
Directors: Christine Molloy & Joe Lawlor
Talent: Denise Gough, Alan Howley, Jose Miguel Jimenez, Aidan Gillen
Release date: 21st October
Christine Molloy and Joe Lawlor’s latest is a biopic of Ambrose ‘Ambrosio’ O’Higgins, a Sligo man who set sail to South America and became Chile’s military governor before his death in 1801. Or, rather, it is a documentary about the making of a biopic of Ambrosio. Molloy and Lawlor draft in two voiceover actors (Gough and Howley), filmed reading to a microphone in an office space, to reflect on filmmaking, artificiality and, as the film continues, a personal history of migration and displacement, while narrating O’Higgins’ extraordinary story.
The result is a playful film, broad in theoretical and narrative scope, whose deviations from its subject — unconscious-like — enrich it, eventually forming its most fundamental and affecting component. Further Beyond begins as an tentative biography and culminates in something much deeper and personal. It is a testament to storytelling, and a vindication of its unorthodox form.
Words: Oisín Murphy-Hall
