Peter Flynn
on
Wander at Will


“I remember the voice of a dead friend,” intones filmmaker Bruce Williams early in his
richly textured, startingly unique film-poem. Wander at Will is a sort of cine-séance,
conjuring up the spirits of the past, of absent friends and of the great artists who
precede and inspire us.

Williams’ tapestry of images and sounds function as a sort of collective unconscious
where the words and music of the great poets and composers underscore and intercut
with Williams’ own work (50 years of documentary and experimental filmmaking) and
that of his friends—dancer/choreographer Arthur Hall and painter/filmmaker Abbott
Meader to name two. In the film’s shifting atemporal and transcultural topographies,
Carmina Burana plays against images of Heartland America, African dance keeps rhythm
with Western ballet, and the poetry of Langston Hughes couples with that of
William Blake.

But Williams nonetheless looks ahead even while his focus is firmly fixed on our
individual and shared pasts—the reoccurring voices of children (the filmmaker’s niece
and nephew) remind us of the generations to come and the place they’ll occupy in the
human chain.

The end result is a moving celebration of dance, music, friendship, and memory; a glorious
testament to the power of cinema and art to puncture through “this great dull life”; and a
film that surprises and delights in equal measure.



Peter Flynn is a filmmaker
and a member of the faculty at
Emerson College in Boston.

Posted July 26, 2025