The Possibilities Are Endless

With documentary The Possibilities Are Endless, filmmakers James Hall and Edward Lovelace have managed to communicate something of remarkable fragility.
Released in early November, the film takes as its subject Scottish musician Edwyn Collins, frontman of Orange Juice ("Never met a girl like you before...")
In 2005 he suffered two catastrophic strokes in quick succession. Upon waking, he could only say his wife’s name, 'yes', 'no' and ‘the possibilities are endless’. He was left without any memories and had to relearn every aspect of living, from walking to speaking.
Collins and his fiercely loving wife Grace Maxwell invited the two filmmakers into this private cataclysm, six years on, to document the slow process of recovery. Eschewing a traditional chronology, the documentary plunges the viewer into Collins’ fragmented relearning experience. Interviews with the singer and his wife are jumbled with footage of Scottish village of Helmsdale, home recordings and archival material of Collins' music career. There is a subplot involving Collins' son and a love interest, played by Yasmin Paige (Submarine) a fictionalised account which sublimates itself smoothly into the film's disjointed rhythms.
Impressionistic and hushed, the film replicates the judder of recovery sensitively rather than self-indulgently. It is terrifying and joyful. The footage of the wet and wind-picked Scottish coastline is particularly stirring. Helmsdale and its barren beauty, once home to Collins, became as alien and frightening as the rest of the world around him -his wife; his mind. Over the course of the documentary, the landscape is allowed to flood with beauty once again. More than anything else, this is a film about finding the way back home.