Harvest – first-look review | Little White Lies

Festivals

Har­vest – first-look review

03 Sep 2024

Words by Hannah Strong

A large, wooden waterwheel in a nighttime scene, surrounded by figures engaged in various rural activities. Bright lights and billowing smoke create a sense of energy and industry.
A large, wooden waterwheel in a nighttime scene, surrounded by figures engaged in various rural activities. Bright lights and billowing smoke create a sense of energy and industry.
Athi­na Rachel Tsan­gar­i’s solemn adap­ta­tion of Jim Crace’s his­tor­i­cal nov­el con­cen­trates on the chang­ing face of a Scot­tish farm­ing vil­lage as the agri­cul­tur­al rev­o­lu­tion begins.

As much as British cin­e­ma loves a peri­od dra­ma, for what­ev­er rea­son the tri­als and tribu­la­tions of peas­ants get a lot less screen­time than the aris­toc­ra­cy. In fact, prob­a­bly the most insight­ful piece of media cre­at­ed around the pre-indus­tri­al work­ing class is the Con­sti­tu­tion­al Peas­ants scene from Mon­ty Python and the Holy Grail, where King Arthur argues with local serf Den­nis about the anar­cho-syn­di­cal­ist com­mune” to which he belongs. Den­nis would like­ly have some choice words about the hap­pen­ings in the remote Scot­tish ham­let where Athi­na Rachel Tsangari’s Har­vest takes place, as hun­dreds of years of hum­ble farm­ing are threat­ened by the unex­pect­ed arrival of a mys­te­ri­ous mapmaker.

The local folk are nat­u­ral­ly sus­pi­cious of out­siders, and after a barn is set on fire, they cap­ture a trio of strangers, string­ing the men up in the stocks and cut­ting off the hair of the woman, who flees into the sur­round­ing for­est. Wal­ter Thirsk (Caleb Landry Jones) looks on with his pierc­ing blue eyes; he’s a man of few words, but noth­ing much escapes his gaze. Wal­ter knows the lands like the back of his hand, hav­ing lived there his whole life, but not always among the peas­ants who work the land. Once the direct employ­ee of the benev­o­lent but meek Mas­ter Kent (Har­ry Melling), Wal­ter gave up his com­fort­able life when he fell in love and chose to work the land with his wife, until she passed away, leav­ing him alone and melan­choly. His joy comes now from the nat­ur­al world; in the film’s gor­geous open­ing sequence, he is seen roam­ing the wild fields, paus­ing to gen­tly admire a but­ter­fly upon his hand.

Wal­ter favours a sim­ple life, but he is decid­ed­ly not a sim­ple man; when Kent intro­duces him to the tal­ent­ed map­mak­er Philip Ear­le (Arinzé Kene) who is to com­plete a sur­veyance of the land, Wal­ter regards him with a degree of sus­pi­cion. He is well aware that change need not be for the bet­ter, and despite how charm­ing Ear­le is, imme­di­ate­ly enam­oured of the beau­ty of the coun­try­side, Walt is right to be sus­pi­cious. Sev­er­al days lat­er, Kent’s decid­ed­ly less agree­able kins­man Edmund Jor­dan (Frank Dil­lane) arrives with grand plans to turn the land into sheep pas­tures, sig­nalling the end of Walt’s rur­al idyll, and the begin­ning of ris­ing ten­sions between the serfs and the gentry.

The most impres­sive aspect of Har­vest is Sean Price Williams’ stun­ning cin­e­matog­ra­phy, which does jus­tice to the rugged beau­ty of the Scot­tish coast, cap­tur­ing every blade of grass and patch of clag­gy mud in arrest­ing detail. Williams, a main­stay of the hal­lowed New York indie scene, is every bit as skilled at cap­tur­ing the blaz­ing sun­set of 18th-cen­tu­ry Scot­land as he is the grit­ty streets of the Big Apple, and great thought has been put into the sen­so­ry aspects of Har­vest, from its sound design that empha­sis­es the howl­ing wind, the lazy buzz of boun­ti­ful insects and, of course, the jubi­lant cel­e­bra­tions that come with the event which gives the film its name.

At last year’s Venice Film Fes­ti­val, Landry Jones debuted his Scot­tish accent, remain­ing in char­ac­ter” through­out the press con­fer­ence for Luc Besson’s Dog­man. The ded­i­ca­tion has most­ly paid off, although he does some­times slide towards Irish – Walt is a soft­er char­ac­ter than he typ­i­cal­ly gets to play, an almost monas­tic fig­ure as he endures both the ire of his peers and the sneer­ing new over­seer, seem­ing­ly with no way out of his dif­fi­cult lot in life. Walt’s per­sis­tent inac­tion and hes­i­ta­tion indi­cate his reluc­tance to lead, and the man is most com­fort­able when roam­ing the wilder­ness, but his com­mu­ni­ty looks to him for lead­er­ship and Edmund Jor­dan expects him to toe the line.

Per­haps the infer­no which opens the film is an omen, the black smoke bil­low­ing into the sky like a sig­nal fire, a warn­ing of car­nage yet to come. The kin­ship that devel­ops between Philip Ear­le and Walt is the core of the film and per­haps its most trag­ic ele­ment, as they are good men placed in unfor­tu­nate posi­tions. Yet some­times the film’s sub­tle­ty is obfus­cat­ing, and Har­vest could delve more into the almost instan­ta­neous racism Ear­le faces as a Black man in an all-white com­mu­ni­ty – his char­ac­ter suf­fers the most, and the film doesn’t have much inter­est in inter­ro­gat­ing how sys­tem­at­ic racism has its roots in ear­ly capitalism.

It’s a trag­ic film, but nev­er a melo­dra­mat­ic one – ten­sions build slow­ly, and although the sense of impend­ing col­lapse is present from the start, Tsangari’s sharp sen­si­bil­i­ties com­pen­sate for any pre­dictabil­i­ty, with the key per­for­mances of Landry Jones, Kene and Melling stand­ing out (Melling, it must be said, it’s per­haps England’s great­est hope for the future of char­ac­ter act­ing, always a delight when he turns up in a part) and pro­vid­ing Harvest’s emo­tion­al heft. Those hop­ing for the satire of Cheva­lier or absur­dism of Atten­berg might be sur­prised by the solemn straight-for­ward­ness of Har­vest, but it’s a remark­ably com­pelling work (and even some­times a fun­ny one!) that mourns a land lost, crushed under­foot by rot that mas­quer­ades as progress.

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