
The first time we saw Athina Rachel Tsangari’s film was in 2015 when she released “Chevalier,” which was a critique of masculine pride and tolerance. This was her second feature film, and it is now nine years later since her last film. However her third feature film “Harvest” has been a big change since this marks her first historical film, in English language rather than Greek and based on a book. With these changes, it is quite ironic that the undermining theme of her works is still based on petty, destructive toxic masculinity. Now with these major changes in mind, Tsangari decided to adopt British Jim Crace’s historical fiction novel that touches upon the theme of a farming community that has succumbed to capitalism and communal distrus. To begin with, the film is described as a “vigorous, yeasty period piece,” even if it sometimes has trouble turning in those broader ensemble narratives – the film presents an almost overwhelming delight in immersion into a whole other time and place.
That much remains under discussion, for what time and what place? Just like Crace\’s book, the decaying beauty showcased in the accents and craggy landscape makes it clear that it was filmed in Argyllshire Scotland. It was filmed about the year in the seventeenth or even the early eighteenth century that was before the Industrial Revolution but after the common land was deeded away with the enclosures which happened after the open field system of the Middle Ages. The fuzziness of the entire environment must be taken as a pointer to the stagnant practices of a society that is not very developed. Very specific though is the remarkably twisted and rusted fencing design by Nathan Parker of “The Kitchen,” “I Am Not A Witch”. It features wooden elements that have been eroded by wind and glued to the foundation of clay, fungus and tradition.
However, it all starts to go south when the stable smoke-house of the farmstead is set ablaze at night under vague circumstances. In this rural across-the-border unnamed Bulgarian village, however, such an incident signals the start of a week long chaotic chain of events comprising only rebukes and retributions. He’s a master of the estate, Master Kent (a great Harry Melling, both alpha and beta, puppy and wolf) however, prefers not to impose his position on the farm workers instead believing in the more altruistic principles of land distribution as taught to him by his late wife, heiress of the farms. But the people do not let the issue go unaddressed. This time they go for three total strangers thin drifters – two men, and one woman – without any court and any evidence. These were guilty, and as punishment, the men were put in the stock for a week, and the woman, Mistress Beldam (Thalissa Teixeira), now accused of witchcraft, underwent a forced head shave.
Feeling uncomfortable with this hostile turn in events is the outcast of the Village Thirsk (Caleb Landry Jones, who does well to affect a semi-Scottish accent) a man from the village who turned to farming because of his passion for the land and nature and was nurtured and educated together with Kent since his mother worked as the young lord’s nurse. This clashing cultural history positions Thirsk as a conciliator of sorts in the village, but as soon as fighting breaks out between parties he has no friends left very fast.
They do, whirling madly when two more outsiders appear in this ever-tranquil area of green. One is Earle (Arinzé Kene) a sophisticated none, a map maker Kent sends to this region for the purpose of map-making, in itself the first instance of giving names to features and plants that were ignored before. The other, Jordan (Frank Dillane of ‘Fear The Walking Dead’), who is “the official heir” to the estate and the cousin of Kent’s wife, appears: he has brisk plans to turn this land into a stock farming business, with no collective and abstract nonsense. Not that he’s the only one: Jordan is already a villain with his freezing pride and absolute royal crown locks. Most of the other main characters vacillate between utter fictional victimization and cold and spiteful mass cruelty. Thirsk deservedly seem to be the protagonist in this story but in truth, it only appears so, he holds no interest to the audience as any normal person would except to the earth he has sworn allegiance to.
While this isn’t completely an all-male group, as notable “Blue Jean” star Rosy McEwen makes an impact as one of the most hard-nosed villagers and Teixeira is briefly in defiance as the first recipient of her rage, “Harvest” does find the very elements of dominance and rivalry that are so quintessentially masculine at the center of the transition period in history (and many others before or after) when individual wants trumped the needs of society, the environment even less so. The vague context adds to the argument that this is a story that we are still trying to get over and can be especially useful in this day and age when the effects of climate change are apparent: Tsangari, for instance, curls the credits with the dedication of the film to her grandparents in Greece “whose farmland is now a highway”.
However, “Harvest” is multilayered in terms of its construction and is considerably clodhopping in regard to the atmosphere, but what comes across from the screen is not a hoary cautionary tale. Because it takes a certain degree of cruelty to assess the class war conflict and some backward practices that perhaps need to be forwarded in history, this doesn’t help there is a running joke about the practice of capping children’s heads with the local boundary stone to prevent them from wandering away and the plot itself is so fast-paced, and the narrative so active that the movie, though heavy in some ways, never goes stale. If anything, as slightly excessively, it’s a little impatient.
The villagers remain interesting as a crowd, but never entirely concrete as persons, although the chorus has a fine and interesting performance all the way around. Tsangari and Joslyn Barnes’ script points out the racial bias against Earle and Mistress Beldam but doesn’t really get into it further.
As an exercise in experiential design and, later, in the demolition of the same “Harvest” never fails to impress, consistently creating a coherent and fragile ecosystem through Parker’s elaborate set design, the contrast of velvet and hessian rags that are cross-stiched on Kirsty Halliday’s costumes and the rough grain and sun-bleached texture of Sean Price Williams’ deliberately compositions that are beautiful, but not pretty cinematography. The film goes way beyond the images of rosy and sunny seasons in Britain that are filled with lush grasses and annoying insects and uses somber, less appealing black soil and mud filth that hasn’t been dried up or clogged with modern-day developments. It’s not a utopian Eden of sorts, but it’s a paradise that has been lost.
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