I remember many years ago hitching a ride with a German truck driver across northern France. As we drove through seemingly endless fields of crimson poppies and bone white gravestones, iconic, almost dreamlike, I asked him, in my limited German, "Was ist das?". "Krieg", he answered, "War". We drove on in silence for a long long way, amidst the remains of our separate yet desperately linked histories. "Unquiet Graves" took me back to that time and place with its haunting juxtapositions of everyday life - food, flowers, conversations - and horror - bodies unearthed regularly to this day, one of them perhaps my own great-uncle, a pilot lost over France in 1917. The rich soundscape - music, a visit from a neighbour, a guided tour, the news from Iraq - and thoughtful narration make us realize how very much "over there" was with us then and is with us still.
Review of Unquiet Graves Memorial Day Special
Elizabeth Yeoman
Posted on October 23, 2005 at 09:53 AM
I remember many years ago hitching a ride with a German truck driver across northern France. As we drove through seemingly endless fields of crimson poppies and bone white gravestones, iconic, almost dreamlike, I asked him, in my limited German, "Was ist das?". "Krieg", he answered, "War". We drove on in silence for a long long way, amidst the remains of our separate yet desperately linked histories. "Unquiet Graves" took me back to that time and place with its haunting juxtapositions of everyday life - food, flowers, conversations - and horror - bodies unearthed regularly to this day, one of them perhaps my own great-uncle, a pilot lost over France in 1917. The rich soundscape - music, a visit from a neighbour, a guided tour, the news from Iraq - and thoughtful narration make us realize how very much "over there" was with us then and is with us still.