Although terminally bedeviled by limited financing, Scottish cinema – or, at least, the representation of Scotland on film – is enjoying a period of cultural renewal and international attention. It received a fillip yesterday when Paul Wright’s “For Those in Peril” was selected for Critics Week at next month’s Cannes Film Festival. In February, Matt Hulse’s “Dummy Jim,” which ARTINFO reported on here, played at the Rotterdam Festival.
“For Those in Peril,” the first feature directed by Wright, is the 10th and final work in the “Warp X” slate set up by the British independent production company Warp, which backs the work of innovative new talent. It has been responsible for such critically acclaimed films as Paddy Considine’s “Tyrannosaur,” Ben Wheatley’s “Kill List,” and Peter Strickland’s “Berberian Sound Studio” (which opens in the U.S. in June).
According to Warp’s website, “For Those in Peril” tells the story of Aaron (played by George MacKay), “a young misfit in a remote Scottish community” who “is the lone survivor of a strange fishing incident that claimed the lines of five men, including his older brother. Spurred on by sea-going folklore and local superstition, the village blames him for this tragedy, making him an outcast amongst his own people. Steadfastly refusing to believe that his brother is dead, and possessed by grief, madness, and magic, Aaron steps out to recover him.”
Wright previously dealt with emotional disturbance and isolation in his impressionistic award-winning shorts. “Hikikomori” (2007) is about a boy who takes sanctuary in his bedroom and refuses to leave. “Believe” (2008) follows the Highlands journey of a man unable to get over the death of his wife. The protagonist of “Until the River Runs Red” (2010) is the self-proclaimed “only daughter of God,” a 16-year-old waif whose roamings with her parents have a horrific backdrop.
Adapted from a 2007 short, Scott Graham’s “Shell,” which opened in the UK in March, is another film that parallels geographical remoteness in Scotland with emotional distance. The title character (played by Chloe Pirrie) is a restless 17-year-old who runs a garage in the Highlands with her epileptic father, Pete (Joseph Meade), her mother having deserted them when Shell was small. She is forlornly pursued not only by a divorced man and a youth but kissed erotically by Pete, culminating in a tragedy that sets her free. (If these films have an icon, it’s Kate Dickie, who played the grieving Glasgow widow bent on revenge in Andrea Arnold’s “Red Road,” appeared in Morag McKinnon’s semi-sequel “Donkeys,” and acted in “Shell,” “Believe,” and “For Those in Peril.”)
Notwithstanding Wright’s interest in folklore and unearthliness, there’s an existential element in this New Scottish Cinema that separates it not only from the faux romanticism that infuses such Hollywood films as “Braveheart,” “Rob Roy,” and “Brave,” but also from the scabrous urban vision of Irvine Welsh (“Trainspotting,” “The Acid House,” “Filth”). It remains to be seen if Brian Ward’s Highlands drama “Indian Summer,” starring Ashley Jensen, Kevin McKidd, and Chaske Spencer, will be like-minded. It is an apparently bittersweet love-triangle set in Sutherland in 1967’s “summer of love.”
The nation’s rapacious drug and alcohol culture (Welsh’s milieu) and the social and political failure of uncaring authorities determines the misery endured by the protagonists in some of the Scottish films written by Paul Laverty and directed by Ken Loach, notably “My Name Is Joe” and “Sweet Sixteen,” but also their recent gentle heist comedy “The Angels’ Share.” As I noted here, Loach and Laverty mock the capitalizing of Scottish heritage culture. Anyone tempted to rent or buy such traditionalist fantasies as the Alexander Korda-produced “Bonnie Prince Charlie” and Vincente Minnelli’s “Brigadoon” will find as much truth in “Loch Ness” and “Water Horse: The Legend of the Deep.”