A Field in England
Jul 6, 2013 0:52:50 GMT -5
Post by Deleted on Jul 6, 2013 0:52:50 GMT -5
Good morning, once again, to you all! I trust that all is well with you this weekend. Due to unprecedented demand from around the world, everyone reading 'The Third' is cordially invited to 'A Field in England'. If you cannot make it in person, here is the film online:
Film4 - A Field in England
Writing in the FT, Nigel Andrews argues that 'A Field in England' is not so much a film, more a metaphysical epileptic fit. Its unprecedented multiple opening in Britain – simultaneously in theatres and on DVD, video-on-demand, Blu-Ray and (tonight) TV channel Film4 – suggests the film’s creators think either “Here is a commercial turkey, let’s take the money and run” or “Here is a new epoch of cinema. Everyone gather round.”
I’ll go with the second. This wonderful, bewildering movie from Ben Wheatley, scripted by wife-collaborator Amy Jump (Kill List) and set on a day during the English civil war, has put reviewers at sixes, sevens and any other number you can think of. Try to decode a plot in which a band of deserters, of both sides, stumble into a mushroom-encircled field being surveyed, mysteriously, by a treasure-seeking alchemist. The film begins in violence, ends in violence – a thieves-fall-out climax of multiple shootings – and in between traipses a landscape sown with the surreal, the symbolic, the fantastical. Nigel concludes thus:
FT - Film reviews: A Field in England, The Bling Ring and more: a ridiculously bold English civil war fantasy
Film4 - A Field in England
Writing in the FT, Nigel Andrews argues that 'A Field in England' is not so much a film, more a metaphysical epileptic fit. Its unprecedented multiple opening in Britain – simultaneously in theatres and on DVD, video-on-demand, Blu-Ray and (tonight) TV channel Film4 – suggests the film’s creators think either “Here is a commercial turkey, let’s take the money and run” or “Here is a new epoch of cinema. Everyone gather round.”
I’ll go with the second. This wonderful, bewildering movie from Ben Wheatley, scripted by wife-collaborator Amy Jump (Kill List) and set on a day during the English civil war, has put reviewers at sixes, sevens and any other number you can think of. Try to decode a plot in which a band of deserters, of both sides, stumble into a mushroom-encircled field being surveyed, mysteriously, by a treasure-seeking alchemist. The film begins in violence, ends in violence – a thieves-fall-out climax of multiple shootings – and in between traipses a landscape sown with the surreal, the symbolic, the fantastical. Nigel concludes thus:
" ... 'A Field in England' spins a single moment in history so that it becomes the centrifuge of all history. It is a ridiculously bold, imaginative movie. Its whirring dynamic is as likely to fling audiences outwards in fright or flight as to have them pinned, thrilled and gravity-defiant, to its fun-fair walls. I nominate it as a cult classic right now, with the “cult” disposable in the future at the first stage of canonic lift-off."
FT - Film reviews: A Field in England, The Bling Ring and more: a ridiculously bold English civil war fantasy