A knight finds himself at the mercy of his armour.
With the support of BFI NETWORK awarding funds from The National Lottery
Director’s Vision for ‘My Dreams Have Been Dark of Late’
The brilliant Ingmar Bergman once said, “We walk in circles, so limited by our anxieties that we can no longer distinguish between true and false…”, in essence that is what this story is: a dream manifested by our anxieties, those anxieties which crush us under their weight. I was drawn to adapting this film from the painting ‘Fever dream of a knight being devoured by his armor’ by Denis Forkas because of how specifically it encapsulates the themes that Bergman speaks of – dreams vs. reality – and because our protagonist is a Knight – a man who is devoted to the service of a cause, recognised by merit, honour and chivalry. This insinuates the burdens and responsibilities he carries, and the anxieties born of them. Inner turmoil and aspirations of goodness inevitably clash with our duties, and so I felt it was necessary to use our story to represent the everyday man as devoted to the cause of everyday living and all the troublesome weight carried with it. In the figure of the knight we find typically heroic qualities to aspire to, therefore subverting them on screen carries the potential for a powerful image. Steeped in visceral components of confusion & pain.
