The late W.G. Sebald’s work resisted classification, and so it goes with this documentary, both essay and meditation, which retraces a walk through East Anglia, in England, that became the backbone of Sebald’s book “The Rings of Saturn.” Writers, editors, critics and others discuss their admiration of the man, and the actor Jonathan Pryce reads long excerpts from “Rings.”
Sebald wrote in his native German, and was translated into English; the implications are discussed, along with the author’s persistent melancholy and his wide-ranging preoccupations, which often circle back to the Holocaust.
As befits a walk, it’s a meandering film. Director Grant Gee shot mostly in black-and-white, the better to emulate the soft, grainy images in “Rings.” Sometimes the scenery is breathtaking, but more often the narration lends the landscape an interest it wouldn’t otherwise have. Gee also uses maps, as well as the novelist Rick Moody’s impressive flow chart of the way Sebald’s digressions branch out from one another.
The interviewees appear (if at all) as ghostly images fading in and out over the scenery, and at times the murmur of the faceless, posh literary voices begins to resemble a college seminar. Still, “Patience (After Sebald)” is a thoughtfully conceived and tastefully executed tribute to a venerated author.