By Chlotrudis Independent Film Society
Rating: 4 cats
Director: Mark Jenkin
Starring: Edward Rowe | Flo Crowe | Joe Gray | John Woodvine | Loveday Twomlow | Mary Woodvine
Year: 2023
Running time: 96
IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11698800/reference/
Jeff says: “ENYS MEN (i.e., ‘mane’, the phrase meaning stone island in Cornish, according to the Guardian) follows a naturalist through her daily ritual, each morning observing the soil temperature around and any change in the appearance of a cluster of wildflowers before trudging back across her windswept island, pausing to drop a stone into a well and listen until it splashes, before returning home to record her observation. A girls appears from time to time, sometimes a man, sometimes a chorus of children singing a folk song before her now decrepit lodging, and there is possibly a bit of time travel. A stone column stands, variably, on the horizon, just outside her front door, or halfway in between. There are, occasionally, Victorian miners or a flock of nuns. People rarely speak. There is no conventional story. While it’s meant to illustrate descent into madness, it seems almost like the performances are there merely to add some motion or someone we follow around to show us the scenery, and I think maybe the point is more to let us take a pastoral jaunt, because the film is beautiful to watch, grainy and saturated with color, with long shots of cliffs and sunsets and crashing waves and closeups of insects, birds, and bits of grass and twigs, and it’s also as beautiful to listen to, rushing water and never ending wind. 4 cats. On VUDU, Prime, hulu, and Apple TV+”