This is the kind of film you need to see in a cinema, it
is the kind of film you need to work out for yourself and, it is the kind of
film that doesn’t get made that often these days. Based on an idea from Mark
Jenkin and his partner Mary Woodvine, Jenkin writes, directs, films, edits and
then composes, and plays, the score. It’s the kind of film that could only have
come from the mind of Mark Jenkin and builds on his impressive features Bait
(2019) and Enys Men (2022).
As with those two films Jenkin uses 16mm film and a Bolex
clockwork camera which only runs for 27 seconds before it needs rewinding.
Jenkins develops the stock himself – surely that’s a new award category?! – and
brings out incredibly vivid colours from the stock, almost hyper-real deep
green and red-rusty textures, the reddest red since Jack Cardiff spun his
camera for The Archers. This being 16mm, there’s a rough edge to this beauty
which makes it vibrant and alive with the end of reel “spoiling” sometimes in
the mix to blur the edges like a flash of sunlight caught in your eye or
something you only thought you saw.
Made in Cornwall, silent style with no sound recorded
live, Jenkin is able to completely control his sound-world too with the actors
re-voicing their entire dialogue during the edit, along with foley and sound
effects added along with his bleakly ambient score which reflects the visual in
the most “silent” of ways. The texturing is for flavour and doesn’t encroach on
the narrative working with the performances and the visuals to create an
atmosphere you can not shake, even when it ends and you are typing away on the
train home…
Jenkin uses repeated images, locations, events to tease out as much meaning as he is willing to present on first viewing. There is tremendous discipline here as the etched message inside the titular fishing vessel or its name plate are all part of the greater linear narrative which plays out whilst characters interact, gut fish, or refuse to give each other their proper names as the fishing village world tosses and turns like the ocean and the only stable environment is the boat itself as the three men go about the laborious and dangerous task of trawling for fish.
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| George MacKay |
Having recently rewatched Jean Epstein’s Finis Terrae
(1929), on the Eureka Masters of Cinema Blu-ray, I was also reminded of some of
his technique with moments of when Jenkin slows down the action to reinforce
the dream-like quality just like the French pioneer. Elsewhere the landscape
and seemingly random details are focused on to pull the viewer into the moments
and the mystery of the observable World. Its hypnotic and hyper-real… a trip
into the surreal that marks our everyday existence.
The Rose is the enigma at the film’s start as it
reappears at the quayside after being lost for 30 years. Soon this is being taken
for granted as the owner, played by Jenkin regular Edward Rowe, and the widow
of one of the men who had gone missing all those years ago, Tina (played by Rosalind
Eleazar of Slow Horses fame), decide to put her back to sea. A crusty old
mariner Murgey, played by Francis Magee, pops up and when asked if the owner
knows him only says, you might do… and he might do at that. Names and knowing…
it’s a muddle but, as in a dream things have a propulsion all of their own.
 |
| Edward Rowe, Mary Woodvine and Adrian Rawlins |
We see a young father called Nick (George MacKay),
collecting food for his elderly neighbours played by Adrian Rawlins and an
almost unrecognisable Mary Woodvine who has been aged up to reflect the rigours
of the 30-year old tragedy that led to the loss of the Rose’s crew and her son
Luke. Her husband has just returned from laying flowers at the cliff where his
son had jumped to his death thereby leaving the vessel one crew member down
and, eventually doomed. For these two the tragedy has never stopped and the
mother seems lost in her grieving time, moving in and out of focus submerged by
the enormity of her loss.
Nick lives next door with his wife Emily and their child
and, as the rain pours down on the village, we see him try to fix the hole in their
kitchen roof, which is possibly, to coin a Doctor Who reference, a fixed point
in time… and it’s not alone. We meet the others who are related to the lost
with the other sailor’s grown-up daughters Jess and Linsey (both played by Yana
Penrose) one of whom still wears his hat and, meeting the handsome new arrival Liam
(Callum Turner, who is currently engaged to Dua Lipa I believe pop fans?) in
the pub, gives it to him on a promise,
 |
| Callum Turner |
A crew is found for the Rose when Nick decides he has to
do something to pay for his roof and Liam, in need of money and a roof over his
head, joins the team and away they go learning the ropes and the art of gutting
a fish as Murgey – the old man from the sea - takes them back onto the waves...
“Don’t worry lads, she always returns…” There’s a forensic depiction of the
methods of trawl-fishing as they start to fill the Rose’s compact hold with
mackerel, bream, bass and hake. The atmosphere is tense as the electronica broods
and Nick already begins to sense that something is out of joint – namely time,
as an etched warning to “get off the boat, now” disappears during the journey.
When they do return to port though the harbour does not
look at all as they left it and it soon becomes clear that not only are they no
longer in the present but they are being mistaken for the two men who
disappeared along with the boat before either man was born. Whilst Liam is
greeted by a younger version of Tina and her eldest daughter, there’s some
arguing to be done but he styles it out – this is different for him than for
Nick. Meanwhile the latter returns to find his family gone and that he is now
being seen as the lost Luke by his now much younger neighbours.
They are lost in time and circumstances beyond their
control and Nick’s hopes that, after every return trip to the sea things will
revert to normal begin to look increasingly forlorn… They’re not just trawling
fish the film is smuggling meaning and that’s increasingly perplexing as the
mood builds and we wait for the moment of clarity…
Perhaps this is a rumination on the essence of place, the
echoes within The Stone Tapes or the ever-present past sensed by the
pilgrims in Powell and Pressburger’s A Canterbury Tale and in Peter
Akroyd’s London? It certainly another work of hauntological exploration that plays on the feelings of the obliquely familiar: the walkers over our
graves and the sense we can never quite pin down that our experience has always happened and is always happening.
There’s an entire Jungian analysis I was about to dive
into but best you just go see the film and make your own minds up. It really is that kind of film…
Details of screening at the BFI and elsewhere are on their website.
British film is alive and weird and taking place with
increasing frequency in Cornwall!
Rosalind Eleazar
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