People sitting. People walking through doors. People looking out windows. Views of front garden. Really, really long stretches of silence. Occasional mentions of "the thing" that happened. That's about it. It is insanely boring, and gave no insight into the crime or its aftermath, except the very obvious "it was hard" kind of thing.

I realize she was a kid when she committed this murder, but I would expect if you're going to use it as the subject of a film that you would treat it as the horrendous event it really was, not just a stupid thing you did that affected only you. I wasn't expecting a big show of remorse or anything like that, but I was taken aback when Perry says that after her first three months in prison she cries and cries, then starts healing. That seemed kind of dismissive. I had hoped to get some kind of understanding of how you could do something so terrible as a teenager, and then deal with it as the adult you become. But all I got was the feeling that this was a lame attempt to draw attention to herself and her books.

I recently had the pleasure of enjoying this film at the Corona Cork Film Festival. It was at an 11am screening and I wasn't expecting much from it. I had, however, seen the famous 1990s film that treated this subject and so I thought I'd check it out.

It is the best documentary I've seen since "Man on Wire". The story unfolds gradually and even if you don't know the background to the film you are filled in on it in due course.

It seems to have been shot on some non-fancy digital cameras. Nevertheless it has a real cinematographic feel to it, with cutaway material that transcends its status as B-roll footage and becomes a series of vignettes; sustained slow-paced studies that are a delight in their own right and perfectly augment the main content, which is interviews.

The music is beautiful and I note the composer recently received an award for this.

What is most striking about the film is the tenderness and humanity of its intervention into the life of its subjects. It brings you totally into their world for the duration of the film - and not just in terms of the broader issues being discussed; the everyday small moments that are part of their routine are given great resonance and become imbued with imprint of the past event.

I'm familiar with Anne Perry's background, and I read the other reviews, but still I watched this. I don't want to seem as if I'm just paraphrasing one of the other reviews, but...

This 73-minute documentary was about 13 minutes of actual semi- substantive insight into Anne and her daily life, assistants, and neighbors. The remaining 60 minutes was people walking into rooms, out of rooms, up the stairs, down the stairs (two sets); shots of Anne working, shots of Anne's empty chair, shots of her assistant typing, shots of Anne cooking, shots of the empty kitchen (daytime and dark), shots of Anne eating while watching TV, shots of her brother going out to walk the dog, shots of her brother playing with the dog, shots of her assistant driving away for the night, shots of Anne through the window as the assistant drives away, shots of the driver/handyman working in the hall, shots of everyone staring off-camera, and notably, the bit with her brother dozing off while she talked to him.

The scenery? Nice. I never mind looking at Scotland. So there's that. The music? Evocative. The house? Attractive, certainly. And I did like the sidebar where they were working on Christmas cards.

But.

That's all I got. But.

Every writer has a story. Something that brought them to who they are and what they do. Sometimes they are really cool stories, and sometimes they are not. Other times they are stories that a writer has been so affected by that they just don't talk about it all that much. Never the less it is a story and it is the backbone of what makes them writers. It tends to inform the stories they tell and how they tell it. In some ways you have to have one in order to be a writer. My experience has been that if you don't, your stories don't tend to be that interesting. They come off flat and not really worth the time to read, which is not to say that you can't find a good story to tell if you work hard enough. Writing just tends to come easier if you have a story that you really need to tell. The story flows better and emotionally connects with people reading it. At least that's been my experience given my own history as a writer.

Anne Perry is a writer with a story to tell. Interestingly enough though, she seems to avoid talking about it with any great detail. You can find details if you are interested and they are put forward in the documentary about her, but it's a difficult topic to hear about. Once you do though, you can completely understand why it might be hard to say much about it. A writer internalizes most of their problems and emotions. That is why they tend to write such great stories, because what they won't say to a person, they will say in the words on the page. It can be buried under a lot of the things the stories they are telling need in order to make it interesting for the reader, but they are there if you look hard enough. For Anne Perry it seems that finding that involves reading into the opposite of what she writes about. She is searching for something deep and meaningful in her life, and many of her characters apparently reflect that reality but the reason for their search is the real prize of understand her.

Ultimately, writing is a long and difficult process for everyone. Even for someone who has written 40 books it takes time to make it feel and sound right for the people who might one day read it. This movie is a long and drawn out process but the pay off, for lack of a better way to describe it, is well worth the time and effort to get through it. Anne Perry - Interiors is a film worth watching for any writer who has ever felt frustrated sitting at a table staring at a blank page or computer screen. For anyone else, it's a deep inside look at where the urge to write tends to come from and will give you a deeper understanding of the life of a writer.

To check out more of my reviews, go here:

http://andrew-heard.blogspot.ca/