The Pos­si­bil­i­ties Are Endless

It’s hard to know what’s hap­pen­ing for the first 20 min­utes of Edward Lovelace and James Hall’s doc­u­men­tary fea­ture, The Pos­si­bil­i­ties Are End­less, as we’re qui­et­ly bom­bard­ed with a stream of experimental/​cosmic images which, it tran­spires, are intend­ed to con­vey the expe­ri­ence of hav­ing a major stroke. The title is a ref­er­ence to the only words that Glaswe­gian pop-rock scion, Edwyn Collins, could utter (along­side ​“yes” and ​“no”) once he had regained con­scious­ness hav­ing been struck with a cere­bral haem­or­rhage in 2005. It finds a heart­warm­ing irony to this cryp­tic phrase, as we see that even after a poten­tial­ly lethal health dis­as­ter such as this, life offers man­i­fold pos­si­bil­i­ties dur­ing the process of recovery.

This is a film whose mod­esty and keen sense of obser­va­tion are its main strengths. It nev­er goes too gaudi­ly into the par­tic­u­lars of what actu­al­ly hap­pened to Collins, instead try­ing to con­vey the sen­su­al expe­ri­ence, what it felt like then and how it feels now. It’s a film about the rise rather than the descent. His pre-haem­or­rhage life is pre­sent­ed with swatch­es of TV and live con­cert footage where we are giv­en the chance to nos­tal­gi­cal­ly recall his time as bari­tone-voiced lead singer of alt-pop­sters Orange Juice and a suc­cess­ful solo artist. But the major­i­ty of the film focus­es on his pro­longed peri­od of reha­bil­i­ta­tion, show­ing how the song­writ­ing and per­form­ing he once did as an occu­pa­tion are now a vital con­nec­tion to his past.

It’s unbear­ably sad that this can hap­pen, at ran­dom, to any­one, yet the film is preg­nant with pos­i­tiv­i­ty and good humour. It’s as much about Collins’ eter­nal­ly unflap­pable part­ner, Grace Maxwell, as it is about Collins him­self, and her sto­ic (though always prac­ti­cal) sense of defi­ance is seen as the crit­i­cal com­po­nent to help­ing her para­mour over­come a pro­longed series of men­tal and phys­i­cal hur­dles. They make for an amus­ing com­e­dy dou­ble act, with Maxwell’s some­what stri­dent man­ner play­ing off of Collins’ ultra-dry sense of humour (which, as we see in the archive footage, has returned with a vengeance).

The pair’s roman­tic ori­gins are oblique­ly explored via a dra­mat­ic aside in which Collin’s own son, William, is seen insti­gat­ing a rela­tion­ship with a girl work­ing in a chip­py. It’s a clever touch in which the direc­tors meld present with past and mem­o­ry with fan­ta­sy. But also present is the film is the mirac­u­lous notion of singing being akin to a reac­tion rather than a con­ven­tion­al action: Collins is able to per­form at con­certs and on the radio despite the fact that he is still unable to talk in the same flu­id manner.