Harvest: It’s been nine years since Athina Rachel Tsangari directed her last movie, “Chevalier”, a scathing contemporary satire on toxic masculinity and senseless measuring contests. Many changes have taken place in Greek writer-director Athina Rachel Tsangari’s third feature film, “Harvest” – her first film in English, her first adaptation and perhaps her biggest and most lavish film to date based in history a few centuries ago – but the idea of cruel and destructive male vanity still runs true.
Adapting Jim Crace’s historical novel, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, about a farming community being torn apart by its own small-mindedness and capitalism, Tsangari’s warm, bread-like, prominent among the period genres of her time, sometimes gets khut from the broad brush of cross-narrative sweep of the ensemble cast but enchants for being a whole sacking deep inside a different era and a different place.
What year and what location is, however, rather contentious. Just as in Crace’s novel, neither is provided, but the dialects not to mention the craggy and lush landscape, the movie was filmed in Argyllshire in Scotland, suggest more towards the North and the time could be any of the 17th or even early 18th century: pre industrial revolution but post-inclosure acts that led to the privatization of any form of common or communal land, hence the decimation of the open field system of medieval times.
The opaqueness of the agora up to a point illustrates the sclerotic nature of the order who, largely, has been stagnant with the times but everything is sharp when it comes to the impressively gnarled and rusty oxidized imagery infused into the production design by Nathan Parker, “The Kitchen,” I Am Not a Witch; aged timber structures fused with mud and equines and time.
Here is when the narrative takes an unexpected and dark turn; a construction that appears unremarkable: the stable of the farmstead is mysteriously set on fire one evening and this cue, which is intended to set a long, turbulent week of accusations and retaliation in motion, only serves to make the villagers more anxious.
The estate’s lord, Master Kent (Harry Melling does an impressive job playing both parts, an alpha and a beta, a pet and a wolf as appropriate), does not impose his authority on the villagers but rather prefers to spread the land among the community in a more socialist way, which was practiced by his deceased spouse, the first owner of the lands.
However, the locals want some retribution for the fire and accuse three strangers, two men and a woman, without a trial or evidence, of being responsible for the set fire. Thus, the local men are tied up to the pillory for a week and the woman, Mistress Beldam (Thalissa Teixeira), has a head shaved and accusations of being a witch hurled at her.
Familiar with the machinations of the world in which he now lives and rather unhappy about its tortious features, is Thirsk (Caleb Landry Jones, supported by close to a semi-Scottish accent), a peasant who used to be a temp laborer and then decided to become a farmer simply because he loved nature.
Thirsk was brought up and received education in Kent, since his mother worked as a nurse of the young lord. Because of these, Thirsk is more of a bridge between clans than a full-fledged member of any of the communities, but this situation does not last long.
A rapid provocation erupts when two additional outsiders appear, this once-quiet patch of green. Quite knowledgeable Earle (Arinzé Kene) happens to … Earle, recently painted as a worldly cartographer, was hired to achieve Kent’s goal of mapping out the area for the first time in history. There was also Jordan, Kent’s cousin by marriage and heir to the estate who arrives with plans of a successful livestock farm.
Where Jordan has an icy demeanor and an unattractive Prince Valiant shaped haircut that makes him look evil, other characters are mostly pathetic victims or representatives of a violent crowd. Thirsk may be the most prominent figure so far but even he is only mildly active and fairly loyal to the soil with no other aims in sight.
Monkey Business is a relatively masculine male workshop but this is not an entirely male dominated group, Rosy McEwen outstandingly takes her place among the most reactionary villagers in ‘Blue Jean’ where Teixeira has not been the agreed target for much of her anger. Formally in ‘harvest’, the importance of these powerful forces which existed in the transitional phase of this era and many eras before, was the monolith of power, wealth and competition with little regard for the people or the environment especially since this was a time of capitalism.
The rather undisclosed time period addresses we will discuss as a past event yet again living through such times, especially during climate change – Tsgangari thanks her grandparents in Greece at the end of the film which is also noticeably touching and quite relevant to the film ‘whose farmland is now a highway’ and captures globalization.
Related: Combined with the dense construction, the film emotionally collapses into an atmosphere that is too much for all of its positive attributes and all its promising elements, too or just imagining would be what it is to never be bleak.
The subject of this work possesses an unusually austere juxtapositional interpretation of class warfare along with a few bizarre practices such as smashing children’s heads against a boundary stone used for boundary delimitation, those practices deserve better, and the storyline is exceptionally tangled the film is paradoxical, heavy in certain ways, but not taut. It’s a little impatient, if anything.
The community of villagers has a certain pull as a collective but in terms of being characterized as separate and individuals, the characters fail to get pull. This does not, however, dampen the overall excellent chorus performance. Racial prejudice is conveyed through Tsangari and Joslyn Barnes’ script towards the Earle and Mistress Beldam characters, however; it is not properly addressed.
However, “Harvest” is, above all, a triumph of world making — and later world tearing apart and for the most part, it succeeds and dazzles because it incorporates so much creativity in creating a believable world with Parker’s intricate designs, Kirsty Halliday’s grungy sweat-stained costumes, and Sean Price Williams’ dirty camera work that contains classic Bruegel-inspired crowd scenes in Harvest.
Not only is the British summer appealing with its green grass and buzzing insects but so is the barbaric waste of the world which the characters seem to inhabit which is full of dirt and gloom, but a world of potential, yet untouched by industrialization. It isn’t an idealistic setting however; it is a paradise that has seen its golden years.
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