Filmend vanuit een lage kleine boot probeert William Raban het perspectief van de Theems te capteren, langs de 70 km die de rivier aflegt van hartje Londen naar de open zee. Hij doorspekt zijn verslag met beelden van Breugels Triomf van de dood en T.S. Eliot die Four Quartets voorleest. Zijn hedendaagse blik is ingebed in een historische context, door het gebruik van archiefbeelden en teksten van de reisschrijver Thomas Pennant, die in 1787 precies dezelfde route volgde.
“This is a vision of the dark Thames, of ‘Old Father Thames’ as an awful god of power akin to William Blake’s Nobodaddy; and, in Blake’s poem, Jerusalem, ‘Thames is drunk with blood’. In this film there is something fearful about the river, something monstrous, recalling Conrad’s line in Heart of Darkness that ‘... this also has been one of the dark places of the earth’. Walking along the banks of the Thames, down river, approaching the estuary, it is possible to feel great fear. One of the possible derivations of the word Thames itself is tamasa meaning ‘dark river’; the word is pre-Celtic in origin, so we have the vision of an ancient, almost primeval, time. And yet there is beauty and sublimity in terror. Raban has learned something from the great artists of the river, such as Turner and Whistler, and portrayed the Thames as clothed in wonder.” (Peter Ackroyd)
