Inland

Fridtjof Ryder’s direc­to­r­i­al debut begins with so much promise it’s frus­trat­ing. Open­ing with a young boy gaz­ing into the depths of the lus­cious Eng­lish coun­try­side, his face out of focus, a sud­den close-up shows him call for his moth­er to be met only with the chat­ter of bird­song. Cut to the boy, now a man, as he strug­gles with poor men­tal health in a clin­i­cal med­ical set­ting. Unfor­tu­nate­ly it’s a down­hill view­ing expe­ri­ence from there.

Inland fol­lows our pro­tag­o­nist, an unnamed young man of Romani descent (Rory Alexan­der), as he search­es for his miss­ing moth­er. Visions from his past become increas­ing­ly real and blur into real­i­ty, caus­ing him to seek answers with help from his father-fig­ure Den­leavy (Mark Rylance).

After an encour­ag­ing start, Inland morphs into an art­house stu­dent film with very lit­tle depth to be found. Despite an excit­ing approach to cin­e­matog­ra­phy from Ravi Dou­ble­day, there is a lot to be desired in Ryder’s script. The film is labeled as a ​‘mod­ern fairy tale’ due to its vague men­tion of Romani folk­lore, but these themes are nev­er dis­cussed out­side of omi­nous one-lin­ers. Con­ver­sa­tions between char­ac­ters are mean­ing­less­ly benign or extreme­ly heavy-hand­ed. It is actu­al­ly quite hard to hear much of the dia­logue because of the often mut­tered deliv­ery, while a croaky voiceover from the protagonist’s moth­er Lizzie (Kathryn Hunter) pops up inex­plic­a­bly through­out the film, overused to the point of annoyance.

The plot is as hard to deci­pher as the dia­logue – not even read­ing the online sum­ma­ry gave me much of a clue, and I found myself min­i­mal­ly invest­ed as a result. The sparse, mys­te­ri­ous approach to film­mak­ing can­not be intrigu­ing – Jim Jarmusch’s Pater­son is a prime exam­ple of how it can work to great effect – but the char­ac­ters need to be com­pelling enough to enjoy watch­ing their qui­et jour­ney for the length of a fea­ture film. Ryder’s name­less pro­tag­o­nist sim­ply does not have much of a per­son­al­i­ty beyond being out of his mind.

How­ev­er, there are some strengths in Ryder’s debut. Rory Alexan­der does a bril­liant job with what he is giv­en, por­tray­ing the lost pro­tag­o­nist with per­fect pup­py dog eyes, while Mark Rylance gives his all to the role of the mum­bling mechan­ic Dun­leavy. It is strange to see the Dunkirk actor dropped into this low-bud­get flick, but it gives the film a glim­mer of star pow­er. Ryder’s inclu­sion of hal­lu­ci­na­to­ry sequences is at times spooky and dis­con­cert­ing, ele­vat­ed by Bartholomew Mason’s haunt­ing folk score.Naturalistic nois­es such as the creak­ing of oak trees make their way into urban envi­ron­ments, cre­at­ing a real clash of audi­to­ry experiences.

Ideas like this could have improved the psy­cho­log­i­cal thriller ten­fold if they were only more con­nect­ed to the nar­ra­tive. They feel like the epit­o­me of style over sub­stance, a col­lec­tion of ran­dom images mushed togeth­er to mediocre effect. Ryder seems to be a direc­tor to watch out for, but the lack of clear nar­ra­tive here is often frus­trat­ing to sit through.