This has the single most peculiar opening to any film I’ve reviewed on here. It’s peculiar because this is a period drama that begins with a shot of the sound-stage that the sets in the film are located on, panning across while Niamh Algar narrates about how this is indeed a film and asking the audience to believe in its story as the characters will. There’s an initial pang of worry that this is insecurity showing through on the director's part, similar to Terry Gilliam’s introduction for the film Tideland that essentially begged his audience to regress back to the mind-state of a child in order to understand what was really going on. But that fades away rather quickly because, oddly enough, this ends up being an ideal introduction to this film on two different fronts.
For one, by acknowledging the audience directly, it effectively puts us in the same position as the main character. Florence Pugh’s Lib, a English nurse, has been sent to an Irish village to observe a young girl (Kíla Lord Cassidy’s Anna) who, along with her family and neighbours, claims to have survived for four months on no food and “manna from heaven”. She’s here to prove whether the claims of divine intervention are founded, or whether this is something that can be explained by the sciences. With the prominent veins of patriarchy running through the narrative and setting, Pugh shows off how practised she is within this arena, imbuing this passive character with active strength throughout. To say nothing of Cassidy as Anna, who gives a haunting performance of a character with a lot of spiritual weight on her shoulders.
The other reason why the Brechtian introduction ultimately works is because that initial plea, for the audience to believe what is going on, sets up how much of the character motivations to follow will be built on the foundation of their own beliefs. Set not long after the Great Irish Famine, there’s an aching tragedy in how convinced the villagers are that Anna is being kept sustained by nothing but the grace of God. It speaks to the nature of purpose in religious teachings, where the existence of an all-powerful godhead is reconciled (or at least attempted to be reconciled) with them letting such tragedies take place.
Not that this film is all about Lib wagging her finger at these backwards bumpkins and their holy nonsense; this script knows the position that everyone is in, Lib included. Whenever it gets to the point where she gets a little too self-righteous about what the town is up to, it then brings up how Lib is in such a privileged position that she can be sent to another country to, quite literally, sit and watch someone else while taking notes (again, bringing the purpose of the audience into the larger story). Again, considering the still-fresh effects of the Famine lingering within the community, something like that is worth keeping in mind. Lib herself is dealing with her own traumas connected to her family and her time serving in the Crimean War, and she becomes invested in Anna’s life just as much out of medical ethics as a transferred need to protect her young.
Where this all ties together is in how the film describes all of this as the result of stories interacting with each other. Stories told to ourselves, told to others, that shape who we are. Once again, I’ll admit to my weakness for films that get into this kind of material, but the way it goes about it is quite enthralling and more than a little confronting. It echoes sentiments from Kubo & The Two Strings in how it emphasises that these stories are the ones that we write, with the decision to make changes to them coming down to the one holding the pen. And in a setting dominated by dogma and… let’s say conspicuous ideas about the roles of women, the need to reclaim that pen is vital. Holding ourselves responsible for every letter that has already been written, whether they were within our control or otherwise, is what creates the need for these kinds of rationalisations, these escapes, just to cope with the guilt. And as the film concludes, returning back to the soundstage, it is made clear that, much like Lib, we as the audience cannot afford to just be passive observers to what we see.
This film first got my attention off the back of the writers, including director Sebastián Lelio, Room’s Emma Donoghue, and Alice Birch, whose scripting gave Florence Pugh her breakout role with Lady Macbeth. But I was genuinely not prepared for what this film had in store for me, exploring the dichotomy of faith and science in a way that doesn’t caricature either side, and making for one of the most sophisticated uses of metafictional storytelling I’ve seen in a very long time. Films like this that actively bring the audience into the story being told are quite risky, especially when paired with a story this serious and properly heartbreaking, but Lelio and company manage to deliver a palpable and brainy period drama that invites the audience to ask all the questions. What we put into ourselves is important, and I’m not just talking about food.
No comments:
Post a Comment