The Shep­herd

A field in Castile stretch­es out under a grey sky, the scene spoiled by a nev­er-end­ing string of phone lines. A crooked house sits under a blan­ket of clouds as a lone Shep­herd walks along the road towards his home. He stops at a bill­board adver­tis­ing a hous­ing com­plex soon to be built on his land. ​“Shame­less bas­tards,” he mut­ters under his breath, before dous­ing it in gaso­line and set­ting it ablaze.

Jonathan Cen­zual Burley’s third fea­ture film, The Shep­herd, pits a hum­ble shep­herd against Espanax, the con­struc­tion firm vying for acqui­si­tion of his land to use for a com­mer­cial devel­op­ment project. In a qui­et tale of humil­i­ty and defi­ance, Bur­ley expert­ly cap­tures the finan­cial and gen­er­a­tional ten­sions of a nation in recession.

There is an inti­ma­cy to watch­ing the film’s epony­mous Ansel­mo (Miguel Martín) com­mand his vast expanse of land, com­plete­ly alone, save for the com­pa­ny of his sheep­dog, Pil­lo. Martín offers an hon­est, rugged cen­tral per­for­mance, prov­ing capa­ble of con­vey­ing emo­tion with slight ges­tures and mea­sured silences. Ansel­mo is a sim­ple, charm­ing man, pass­ing his time drink­ing wine, tend­ing to his sheep and flirt­ing awk­ward­ly with the local librarian.

Bur­ley trans­forms the dusty Sala­man­ca land­scape into an iso­lat­ed par­adise, con­struct­ing Anselmo’s life from the mut­ed blue of his kitchen walls to the bril­liant scar­let sun set­ting over his farm. With his atmos­pher­ic orig­i­nal score, Tim Wal­ters suc­ceeds in build­ing immense ten­sion in the absence of overt dra­ma. Sheep move flu­id­ly across Anselmo’s field, fill­ing the entire frame as the bells hang­ing from their necks clang qui­et­ly. The score chimes low and steady over­head. The world con­jured is a remark­ably peace­ful one, and the film­mak­ers endorse its sim­plic­i­ty wholeheartedly.

El Pastor’s strength lies in its abil­i­ty to inject dra­ma and com­plex moral con­sid­er­a­tions into sim­ple shots and uncom­pli­cat­ed sto­ries. Dra­ma is height­ened dur­ing the film’s sec­ond half as the sto­ry­book vil­lains Paco (Juan Luis Sara) and Con­cha (Alfon­so Mendiguchía) threat­en to dis­rupt Anselmo’s tran­quil exis­tence. Bur­ley builds to a slow crescen­do towards the film’s final sequence, so that when Anselmo’s leaves his house to con­front the devel­op­ers for the last time, it feels less like walk­ing out­side, and more like walk­ing into battle.

In a final twist cer­tain to sub­vert expec­ta­tions, Bur­ley suc­ceeds in cre­at­ing a visu­al metaphor for the harsh reper­cus­sions of greed and self-ser­vice, sure to stay with you long after it’s left the screen.