As our theme for the March Salon Event is ‘screenwriting’ we took a trip to Glasgow Film Festival to see a film that appeared to be very Scottish…
Many years ago, before we understood the term ‘inclusivity,’ there was a stooshie over a certain television company broadcasting Ken Loach’s film Sweet Sixteen with subtitles. Shocking! Perhaps the chief insult was that it was shown on Scottish television. As an Edinburgh organisation we’ll steer clear of discussing the Glasgow accent.
In the case of the film Harvest (Athina Rachel Tsangari, 2024) it wasn’t the rural setting deep in some ‘fictitious’ landscape (in fact, shot in and around Oban, with a good smattering of local participation) but the bizarre accent of the protagonist Walter Thirsk, played by Caleb Landry Jones, that needed visual assistance.
Given the film was about a self-sufficient farming community suspicious of outsiders, in many ways it sat outside its own premise. There was no real sense of place, save a bucolic setting with strongly adhered-to boundaries. It was hard to get a handle on the history since the villagers seem to lie outwith a specific timeframe.
Yet the overall concept of a community being ravaged by the advances of modernity gave a universality to a story which could simply have been about Scotland’s unpleasant history of landowners favouring sheep farming’s lucrative returns, clearing out crofters who, relocated to Glasgow’s slums, ended up many years later in a Ken Loach film.
What comes around?
Maybe, given this film was a co-product of Sweet Sixteen films, among other companies. Despite its sprawling, gnawing angst, there are the usual, but sadly omnipresent, tropes: racism, patriarchy, greed. Ironically, these are displayed by the villagers themselves.
It’s not always easy to know who the ‘baddies’ are in such a film. Those who watch to the end of the credits will read the moving dedication “To my grandparents, whose farmland is now a highway.” This demonstrates how Tsangari found a resonance in her first English-language film – adapted from Jim Crace’s Booker-shortlisted novel – that understands, challenges, and questions, but offers few answers.
Some might not enjoy films that lack an easy arc, a neatly tied conclusion, and a clear message, but this film is worth sticking with. Harvest takes a long time to say not very much except that you reap what you sow.
Which might be a cliché.
But it’s true.
Harvest is due out in UK cinemas on the 18th of April.
Our Screenwriting Salon is on the 25th of March - details here.
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