The
only previous Ben Wheatley film I've seen, almost certainly through
my own erring, is 'Kill List'. I was full of good
intentions over catching 'Sightseers', yet alas it
didn't come to be. But I was keener still to catch this latest
release. I've always regarded the English Revolution as one of the
more fascinating periods of our history. That our culture so often
tries to sideline it only makes it more enticing. And I've always
loved the cinema of the old, weird England, which is quite clearly
being referenced here. (One review has described this film as “'Witchfinder
General' as imagined by Alejandro Jodorowsky.”) Though I
call it a cinema, it's possibly more a mood than a style. It's the
mixture of the deadpan and hallucinatory, the clods of earth clinging
to your feet and the Devil breathing down your back.
And
it's heartening to know, in this era of CGI, 3D and all those other
expense-inducing acronyms, that you can still shoot a film in
black-and-white in less than two weeks, featuring five guys and a
field. A film I'm likely to remember long after those tributes to
excess that otherwise clogged our summer.
It
is most likely merciful that I'm not offering a proper review of this
film, for I'd surely get as waylaid as the characters within it. It's
one of those films you know you want to see again before you've even
finished your first watch. But as a very provisional stab at things –
the mushroom circle is the primary metaphor. What we see isn't a
causal series of events but an iteration – something which has
probably happened before and will almost certainly happen again.
Though
in many ways at variance from 'Kill List', it does
share it's roots in the horror cinema of the Sixties and Seventies –
and in particular the God-shaped hole which they seemed to focus on.
(The paradox of such films was that they were aimed at a modern,
sophisticated, secular audience, yet seemed pitched to warn that
audience that things had almost literally gone to the Devil. They
must make for some of the bleakest world-views in mainstream cinema.)
'Kill List' suggested socialisation was the same
thing as damnation. 'Field' warns that we can
defeat the Devil only by usurping him.
But
of course to find fixed readings for such films would be the same
error as trying to force on them linear plots. They're journeys not
destinations. Their most clueless critique is “if you like it so
much, try explaining what it means.” Of course you can like
something without understanding it! There may well be no treasure at
the bottom of it's pit, there may be “only shadows”, but it can
still exist as
a potent framing device in your mind. I felt as mesmerised
in that mushroom-ringed field as any of the characters.
Something
nearer to a proper review lies here.
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