A Day So Dark, So Warm
A Reflecting Electric Eye Production
2001

Reviewed by Bleech_

"It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."
- William "Willy Shakes" Shakespeare, "MacBeth"

Wow. This is one of the most controversial videos to ever surface in VoIOdom. The reason ? The only known circulating video of Syd Barrett in the last 25 years. A huge yelling match erupted amongst some of the fanbase, sight unseen...one half contending that this video was the disturbing, terrible work of a stalker performing a massive invasion of Syd's privacy. The other insisting that it was shot with Syd's consent, even giving the camera a "wry smile" at one point when passing a billboard that read "BAD TRIP?"

See the above quote for all you need to know regarding either side of THAT particular shitstorm.

The large bulk of this video's running time is a travelogue of London and Cambridge. This is at least halfway interesting. Interesting places with text (which was occasionally unreadable on my MPEG copy). Eventually, near the end, Syd finally appears.

He walks out of a shop, crosses the street, and walks about along his way. That's it.

What would be about 40 seconds of footage at normal speed is slowed down so that the clip with Syd itself a minute and a half. Clad in a wifebeater and blue shorts, gut swinging, and spear bald, Syd exits a shop, strolls down a sidewalk, and then crosses the street (the alleged "wry smile" is actually Syd looking both ways before he crosses the street). That's about it.

Hence, I can't recommend this to anyone but the most rabid of Sydiots and people with a strong sense of morbid curiosity. Is this video a terrible, sick invasion of someone's privacy ? Well, I don't know how much privacy one can reasonably expect to have on a public street. However, it does end up being a a little disturbing...what would maybe be a decent travel video is capped off by slow-motion video of an aging obese broken man who wants only to be left alone. It ends up being neither revelatory nor despicable, but the filmmaker should have had the decency and taste to leave well enough alone.

"Sometimes, Louis...sometimes dead is better."
- Jud Crandal, "Pet Sematary"