Rain, Drizzle, and Fog
1998 · 49m · Canada
Directed by Rosemary House
Genres: documentary, essay film, historical
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, tender
Six St. John's writers and performers guide a portrait of North America's easternmost city, tracing five centuries of fishing-merchant control, hardship, and fierce local pride in a harsh Atlantic harbour town.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
It's a essay doc, sure, but House lets the voices do the talking instead of imposing some arch thesis—the contrarian move here is restraint, and it's almost boring enough to work, which infuriates me because I respect it.
A masterclass in the essay-documentary lineage: the formal choice to let six St. John's voices narrate their own city's five-century depth creates a polyphonic rigor that recalls the best of Erika Langlois and Thom Andersen, each persona layered into the archive like an argument made visible.
The single decision to anchor this in local speakers rather than an omniscient narrator transforms what could be rote historical survey into something alive—you hear the city's estrangement and pride in the cadence of actual people, which costs nothing and changes everything.