A Field in England

Ben Wheatley’s Kill List was a glo­ri­ous, machine-tooled runic shock­er, though its gid­dy, gaudy thrills were mul­ti­plied ten­fold by a swelling sense of nation­al pride. At long last, we could waltz from the cin­e­ma in the knowl­edge that here was a British film­mak­er who could trade body blows with the best of ​’em, up there with Roeg and Boor­man in their pomp. And he does so while latch­ing on to and sub­vert­ing that most staunch­ly tra­di­tion­al British milieu: glum social real­ism. Being awe­some and fly­ing the flag. Dou­ble win. So it is on those terms that we are sad to report that we real­ly, real­ly didn’t get on with Wheatley’s wacky, indul­gent lat­est, A Field In England.

This painful­ly idio­syn­crat­ic mono­chrome far­ra­go charts all the fun and frol­ics that can be had in a field. In Eng­land. Involv­ing a tear­away fac­tion of trea­sure-seek­ing, knob-wart­ed grotesques who have escaped from the cut-and-thrust dev­as­ta­tion of the Eng­lish Civ­il War (cir­ca 1648), it allows us to observe as they con­verse and bick­er in a flow­ery old-world ver­nac­u­lar (c/​o Amy Jump’s assid­u­ous­ly researched script) and embark on psy­chotrop­ic dread voy­ages stim­u­lat­ed by the local flo­ra and fau­na. Reece Shear­smith, some­how chan­nelling all of his League Of Gen­tle­men char­ac­ters simul­ta­ne­ous­ly (and not in a good way), is caught between a pair of bum­bling oafs and Michael Smiley’s rogue sor­cer­er who has stolen impor­tant papers from Shearsmith’s employer.

Not only is A Field In Eng­land a film which defies expla­na­tion, it wan­ton­ly repels it. It’s less a film, it’s a filmed art school stag do. Unlike Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey which syn­the­sised the expe­ri­ence of an acid trip for the enjoy­ment of all the fam­i­ly, this is a film which can only be under­stood and enjoyed while in the heady throes of some tox­ic freak­out. The lengthy scenes in which char­ac­ters lol­lop around in their own mind-man­gled haze are tedious in the extreme, with Wheat­ley opt­ing for laboured ran­dom­ness and naff slo-mo effects over any kind of intri­cate, clever, relat­able sys­tem of mania.

The film harks back to such old, weird British his­tor­i­cal films as Peter Watkins’ Cul­lo­den, Kevin Brownlow’s Win­stan­ley and Michael Reeves’ Witchfind­er Gen­er­al, but it reminds more of lam­en­ta­ble nu-garage chalk chron­i­cle Human Traf­fic. Unlike its hal­lowed fore­bears, its post­mod­ern demeanour and the­atri­cal, sin­gle-set­ting mode make it come across like a know­ing con­tem­po­rary tale that’s been arbi­trar­i­ly set in the past. Whether it’s intend­ed as an homage or update of these films is also dif­fi­cult to judge.

Props must go to Wheat­ley for pro­duc­ing some­thing so stub­born­ly unclas­si­fi­able, but there is sim­ply no fun in con­sum­ing a film which rev­els in its own point­less­ness. The film clear­ly has its fans, and any detailed elu­ci­da­tion on its mes­sages and mean­ings would be cheer­ful­ly received. But to any­one who wish­es to take this lop­sided gam­bol into England’s dam­aged heart, we say good luck to you. You’re real­ly, real­ly going to need it.