Cinema Holocaust: A FIELD IN ENGLAND
- Created on Tuesday, 13 August 2013 21:43
- Last Updated on Thursday, 15 August 2013 08:31
- Written by Daniel Rooney
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And now for something completely different - Daniel Rooney's DEBUT article for Cinema Holocaust - a studious and critical look at Ben Wheatley's film, 'A FIELD IN ENGLAND' - Enjoy!
Welcome weary wanders!
Feast your eyes and let your minds meld with this journey into the British psyche - take care, all ye who enter, ‘A Field in England’.
Ireland stands as the leering thorn in England’s side, wounding it and vying for attention. O’Niell appears as the bane of Whitehead - “This is your country is it not? I've claimed a small corner that I intend on raping”. Oliver Cromwell is given words of scorn as well when news is told of his battering of Welsh forces, to which O’Niell offers on the subject - “This Irish bastard requires his mirror”.
The film ‘Ghost Dance’ features the French philosopher Jacques Derrida playing ‘himself’ musing over the laurels of cinema and its relationship to the notion of ghosts. He proposes, “Cinema is the battle of phantoms.” If this is the case, ‘A Field in England’ becomes more a battle of shadows - scrapping in the dirge for an unwieldy treasure.
Interspersed tableaux vivant are but one of the ways in which the shadow of Herzog is invoked. ('Sightseers,' Wheatley’s previous film, which is a comedy black as night, features similar nods to the Bavarian auteur in its use of Popol Vuh and reverence of landscape) The pawns in the field freeze standing deathly still, adding an odd air reminiscent of how reality is paused in ‘My Son My Son What Have Ye Done’, for example. The shadow of greed or the treasure bayed for by the group harkens back to the lust for gold in ‘Aguire: Der Zorn Gottes’.
These are the shadows at play, the phantoms that haunt the piece - tearing through its fabric and dragging with them the ideas of other ideas forming from something old, something new.
The shadow of Godot looms large as Whitehead emerges after a chorus of painful shrieks from the tent smile first like the re-appearing manical grin of the Chesire cat, roped like Lucky and pointed forth by O’Niells Pozzo akin to a homing beacon closing in on the field’s hidden wealth. His roped torso appearing to hold him from disappearing into his smirk - like the leather straps holding in place Aguirre’s doomed insanity.
Written by Amy Jump and directed by Ben Wheatley, ‘A Field in England’ peers out from the cracked sod beneath screaming skies and crashing canons of horror as a ripe root indeed - a tuber bursting at the seams with ideas laden with the rotting fruits of occultists Agrippa, Dee and Kelley. It's almost as though Merighe’s ‘Begotten’ had set forth and ravished the very fabric of ‘Witchfinder General’, birthing itself anew, refashioned along the Herzogian sublime, within the confines of viscous dread found at the heart of the absurdists quasi-minimalist ambiguities.
Somewhat distanced from the tyranny of narrative, the “plot” as it is concerns a field, some haggard soldiers at war cowering from their duties, the hunt for an Irish alchemist named O’Niell (Michael Smiley), and the promise of treasure thought of as wealth - but that could be a stranger beast indeed. Another alchemist called Whitehead (Reece Shearsmith) is charged with putting a stop to the Hibernian as the two play an absurd game with the field as host. Other souls trapped in pastures include Jacob (Peter Ferdinando), Friend (Richard Glover) and Cutler (Ryan Pope) with Whitehead’ s master Trower (Julian Barratt) lost in the bushes guarding the meadow.
Set in the 17th century during the English civil war the tale is spurred on by the occult oddities which permeated the insurrection – such as the faction within the parlimentarians (or roundheads), the belligerents of the war seeking to severe the established monarchy’s ‘divine line’ to kingship, known as 5th monarchists - a group pre-occupied with fashioning England into the 5th Kingdom of God before the second coming and obsessed with occult, the year 1666, and the number of the beast. God it seems in the field is feeling vengeful and lines are uttered submissively of God’s want to punish England. The interregnum it might be suggested is the reason for the pain that besets the troupe of soldiers so woe-begone and trapped, “God is punishing us for everything”, with everything being the republican control of the Isles and shattering of the divine line.
Ireland stands as the leering thorn in England’s side, wounding it and vying for attention. O’Niell appears as the bane of Whitehead - “This is your country is it not? I've claimed a small corner that I intend on raping”. Oliver Cromwell is given words of scorn as well when news is told of his battering of Welsh forces, to which O’Niell offers on the subject - “This Irish bastard requires his mirror”.
O’Niell’s entrance to the proceedings is a gloriously odd one indeed for he is dragged out from beneath the field as though conjured to sow the seeds of coercive confusion among the deserters - as they pull him from the earth they cross into oblivion and open themselves to damnation.
“We are but shadows here”
The film ‘Ghost Dance’ features the French philosopher Jacques Derrida playing ‘himself’ musing over the laurels of cinema and its relationship to the notion of ghosts. He proposes, “Cinema is the battle of phantoms.” If this is the case, ‘A Field in England’ becomes more a battle of shadows - scrapping in the dirge for an unwieldy treasure.
The shadows, rather than the ghosts or phantoms of representations of actors, are instead those of other works alluded to throughout the text of the film, adding layers of referential interest to a piece already shrouded in intrigue and mysticism.
Interspersed tableaux vivant are but one of the ways in which the shadow of Herzog is invoked. ('Sightseers,' Wheatley’s previous film, which is a comedy black as night, features similar nods to the Bavarian auteur in its use of Popol Vuh and reverence of landscape) The pawns in the field freeze standing deathly still, adding an odd air reminiscent of how reality is paused in ‘My Son My Son What Have Ye Done’, for example. The shadow of greed or the treasure bayed for by the group harkens back to the lust for gold in ‘Aguire: Der Zorn Gottes’.
These are the shadows at play, the phantoms that haunt the piece - tearing through its fabric and dragging with them the ideas of other ideas forming from something old, something new.
The film could indeed be seen as an historical prequel to Wheatley’s previous foray into the realm of horror, ‘Kill List’ from 2011. If one follows the idea that the England in which the action occurs is as O’Niell claims “On the edge of something”, perhaps the precipice it faces is the centralization of power in the hands of a new cabal far menacing and ambitious than the pretenders to the throne - with the darkest of arts on their side or having been “Blasted by an ill planet” with Whitehead as the movement's inaugurator.
The edge is passed as a new England is born with rabid power wolves laying out the cesspool from which the political cultists and shadowy elites of ‘Kill List’, who permeate the house of lords, might have spawned.
To arouse ‘Kill List’ is of particular note with regards the director’s wish to cross-pollinate genres, for the earlier film is an exercise in eviscerating the Pinter-esque menace of his own crime drama (see 'Down Terrace') and sacrificing it to the gods of harvest on Summer Isle. ‘A Field in England’ however is more restrained in its exploration of (sub)genres, delving into the mire of experimental film while trudging through the swamp of occult horror - as though the hammer films of ages past had been interred by the likes of Kenneth Anger.
In following with the traditions of experimental cinema, from the likes of ‘Eraserhead’ to ‘The Woman Who Powders Herself’, colour is banished from the Field and such a lack of spectrum, as is predominantly the case, immediately wrong foots a potential audience outside such cult corners. The contrast of light and dark bathes proceedings in swathes of grey, which only adds to the ambiguities at play. Confounding the impact of the films core strength - the editing. Jump and Wheatley bombard the audience with waves of images that ultimately give way to unnerving tranquillity in moments of deranged slow motion. The images are meticulously arranged and manipulated - concocting a sense of unease from the screaming blackness of the opening frame through the psilocybin-induced lurch forward from shackled apprentice to grimaced master, to the final lingering glimpses of Whitehead and fallen friends standing to face the future in the field.
Upon ingestion of the field’s flesh and the rush of hallucinogens and Whitehead’s declaration to become the field, the editing explodes like the best of Eisenstein in a series of striking shadows that begin to morph into one, flickering between O’Niell and Whitehead as both descend further into the roots of the impure pastures.
David Lynch often refers to a notion he has dubbed ‘The Eye of The Duck’, which is a truly wonderful aspect of off-kilter cinema. The eye of the duck is that one scene, perfectly embedded in a film, not necessarily the best scene, but the one moment in which the crux of what the piece is, at it’s very core, is laid bare. An example would be the scene in Suave Ben’s apartment from ‘Blue Velvet’ where logic disintegrates and Dean Stockwell mimes Roy Orbison’s ‘In Dreams’. In ‘A Field in England’ the duck’s gaze falls half way through, in what is known as ‘the tent scene’, in which Mark Kermode reckons to be one of the creepiest cinematic moments of recent times, and the key slice of the film’s creeping derangement.
The shadow of Godot looms large as Whitehead emerges after a chorus of painful shrieks from the tent smile first like the re-appearing manical grin of the Chesire cat, roped like Lucky and pointed forth by O’Niells Pozzo akin to a homing beacon closing in on the field’s hidden wealth. His roped torso appearing to hold him from disappearing into his smirk - like the leather straps holding in place Aguirre’s doomed insanity.
‘A Field in England’ is noteworthy for it is the first film of note to seep into the public sphere, by an already established director, and to utilize a potentially radical and new egalitarian method of distribution – simultaneous release. (Another British film ‘Mum & Dad’ attempted something similar in 2008.) This distribution model means that on the day of release, the film was available to buy on DVD and Blu-ray, watch at home on Film4, online with VOD services or be sought out in the handful of cinemas to screen it.
The best aspect of this new technique is that it brings into the discussion the way in which films are seen and what kind of distribution methods best fit certain types of film. Simultaneous release it seems is best suited to smaller, stranger beasts that need to be unleashed to the widest possible audience as soon as it can. ‘A Field in England’ would have been lost for the best part of a year if it was released into the laps of smaller, independent cinemas, whose numbers it seems are dwindling.
I, for one, am grateful I had the choice of how, when and where I got to see it on opening day, and I look forward to having such free reign as an audience member again. For what it is ‘A Field in England’ is a wonderfully rich descent into the fevered hallucinations of a nation, and as such, is a worthwhile trip to take.
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