‘Harvest’ LFF 2024 Review: Cultivation and Chaos
A hazy mosaic of ripe wheat and endless fields, Harvest is a pastoral hallucination slathered in mud and haunted by a threatening future. Based on the Jim Crace novel of the same name, the film is simultaneously static and frantic, honing in on the mundane tasks of villagers on the precipice of immense change. Caleb Landry Jones delivers a mesmerising performance as the melancholic Walter Thirsk, the observer at the centre of a tiny village caught up in the rituals of a summer’s harvest.
Filmed in the idyllic county of Argylleshire, Scotland, Athina Rachel Tsangari’s English-language debut is visually immersive in its depiction of early modern rural life. The opening montage pans over Thirsk submerged in the natural world, awash with golden hues: this feels like a world entirely removed from our own. The audience is taken through the harvest processes carefully, villagers reaping and threshing crops as undercurrents of tension weave through the narrative. Amidst this dreamlike arcadia, outer forces encroach upon the simplicity of their lives. Master Kent, played by Harry Melling, serves as a benevolent master of the hamlet and actively participates in the community, a sharp contrast to his cousin who appears later in the film. This class hierarchy, however, is not forgotten: he is symbolically positioned above them as he perches on his white steed, and as he slowly begins to assimilate into the upper echelon of lords and rulers, his clothes transition from soiled tunics to crisp, starched silhouettes.
The entire film takes place over seven frenzied days. To the villagers, nothing is more terrifying than the possibility of change and disruption, from the arrival of a mapmaker to the intrusion of residents from other towns. The steadiness of a pre-industrial community built on care is something that they are fiercely protective over, and intruders are harshly reprimanded - when three outsiders arrive by boat, the men are condemned to the fate of the pillory, and the woman, nicknamed Mistress Beldam, has her hair unceremoniously cut off. Despite this, there is an inherent fascination with her as an outsider and woman of colour. The villagers clutch remnants of her hair like trophies, calling out but being unable to reach her. Their nickname of Mistress Beldam is simply a shortened version of ‘belle dame’, or beautiful girl, introducing an element of objectification and fetishisation. This venom is misplaced - the only reason the three strangers have arrived is because their village has crumbled (a twin fate that the original community will soon suffer) due to increasing profit-seeking behaviour from their master.
The horror of Harvest does not arise from military attack or occult activity, but the slow inevitability of modernity that permeates England. As barns are set alight and animals are cruelly slaughtered, blame is shifted from person to person until the village disassembles and marches away, a chaos that Master Kent’s cousin Jordan embraces, leaving him a blank canvas to begin producing goods for profit. The audience is witnessing the birth of capitalism on a microscopic level. Harvest’s psychedelic allure becomes starkly colder in the wake of this destiny: both completing the tragedy of its erosion and dimming in the face of its destruction, a landscape of ghosts.
Harvest is scheduled to be released in the UK in late 2024.
Edited by Humaira Valera, Co-Film & TV Editor
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