A Field In England
Rating: 3½ stars out of 5
Starring: Reece Shearsmith, Michael Smiley
Directed by: Ben Wheatley
Running time: 90 minutes
And now for something completely different: a black comedy set in 17th-century England at the time of the Civil War and given a lift with some psilocybin mushrooms. Oliver Cromwell, meet Timothy Leary.
A Field In England is a low-budget, black-and-white piece of delirium arranged by Ben Wheatley, the young British filmmaker (Kill List, Sightseers) whose name is quickly becoming a trademark for dark and funny crime. Co-written with his wife, Amy Jump, this bleak piece of political history-cum-Shakespearean tomfoolery is horrible, amusing, fresh and ancient all at once. I can’t say I understood a word of it, but sometimes you just know you’re in the presence of mad genius.
It begins at the edges of a battle, where a man named Whitehead (Reece Shearsmith), the servant of a fine gentleman, has become separated from his master. Whitehead is more or less the hero of A Field In England, even though his soft hands and bookish ways make him mostly unsuitable to its harshness. “You fink about a fing before you touch it,” a companion asks him, accusingly. “Am I right?”
Whitehead has fallen in with a company that includes Cutler (Ryan Pope), a soldier who will eventually turn out to have perhaps the most disgusting case of venereal disease ever portrayed in black-and-white cinema. He also shows signs of gout, St. Anthony’s fire, hemorrhoids, palsy and several other misfortunes, all of them rhymed off by Whitehead, who also serves — as the only educated person hereabouts — as doctor, executive assistant and slave. Jacob (Peter Ferdindando) and Friend (Richard Glover) complete the foursome and act as a sort of commentators on the action, such as it is. Friend is especially useful, a fool right out of the Bard: “I think I’ve worked out what God is punishing us for,” he muses. “Everything.”
As a battle rages unseen beyond the trees, they decamp for a nearby alehouse to work things out. Their progress is distracted by a pole in the middle of a field to which is attached a rope, and when they yank it, they haul in the villain of the piece, O’Neil (Michael Smiley), an alchemist who believes there is a treasure buried somewhere hereabouts, and that Whitehead knows where it is. O’Neil is fearsome, and there are hints that he is perhaps the devil, being Irish and all. “I would have thought taller,” someone says, but even given his height there is something Satanic about his cruelty: there’s a scene where Whitehead is taken into a tent and has something done to him that engenders heart-rending screams of pain. He emerges as O’Neil’s prisoner.
Much of A Field In England takes place unseen or at a previous time. We don’t know exactly the relationship among all the men, just like we may not be exactly sure about Oliver Cromwell and the Civil War. Occasionally everyone stops for a tableau vivant, the men posing in the field as a gentle breeze stirs long grasses. At other times, Whitehead will look to the sky and see a black sphere, like a sudden eclipse, that momentarily darkens everything like an encroaching history lesson.
Much of this is very funny in the manner of lower-class comic relief, or quite touching in the same way. “You two are peas in a pod, and I came to pick up the scraps of your affection,” one character will say to his fellows: the psychological candour of the movie, its total lack of irony, makes it feel both distant and yet comforting.
And just when you adjust to the era, the men eat a soup of wild mushrooms that produces a kaleidoscope of faces and images that look like an experimental ’60s movie. A Field In England is a psychedelic trip 300 years into the past: fantasy as prologue. I’ve never seen anything like it. In some way, I still haven’t.