A winter day where snow is falling… In John Berger’s house, located in the French Alps, the actress Tilda Swinton peels apples as she asks Berger about his memories of his father. Berger, an art critic and novelist, watches Swinton’s hands at work as he talks about how his father peeled apples for him during his youth. The conversation moves onto Berger’s suppositions about his father’s memories of the Second World War, a topic that he never spoke about, based on the fragments of Berger’s own childhood memories. Soon the topic moves to Swinton’s father. Without pausing as she prepares the apple crumble for dinner that night, the memories of her own father, a soldier during his lifetime, start to unspool. Everyday tasks like these seem like the thread ends that allow us to connect to the memories of people who lived in a different age and culture to ourselves.

“The Seasons In Quincy: Four Portraits of John Berger” is a 2015 documentary supervised by Tilda Swinton. The documentary gives an insight into Berger’s thoughts and personality, with the narrative voice changing with each director’s unique perspective. Eight years after its completion, just this year the Japanese subtitled version is being screened.

Berger was born in London in 1926. In the 1970s, he moved to a small village in the French Alps where he started subsistence farming as he continued to think and write. The documentary goes through the seasons, as if following his days there, with each part having a different director, and is smoothy brought together by Berger’s thoughts. This story begins with a dialog between Berger and Swinton, but soon the seasons and the time change, with the story ending with their children chatting in Berger’s house in the Alps. The answer to the question that Berger poses to the young generation can be found in the raspberry tree in the garden—which Beverly, Berger’s wife, lovingly cares for—that provides a bountiful harvest each year. Or perhaps, it doesn’t answer the question, rather lending an ear to the thoughts of everyone present.

John Berger tried to fill in the trenches that divide us by not only listening to the voices of people from different eras, places, and worlds, but by also telling their story. This documentary is made by people who have a clear affection for Berger, who visited him and wished to speak with him, and allows us to realized that society is made up of people that includes us too. A conversation with Berger never lacks for his illustrative storytelling.

“We who draw do so not only to make something visible to others, but also to accompany something invisible to its incalculable destination.” 

The Seasons In Quincy: Four Portraits of John Berger
Director: Tilda Swinton / Colin MacCabe / Bartek Dziadosz / Christopher Roth
Cast: John Berger

https://johnberger4.babelo.co