A Field in England

A FIELD IN ENGLAND is an incredibly brilliant and haunting film. While it may look like a psychedelic horror movie, like WITCH FINDER GENERAL, in reality it is a very straightforward film based very directly on the English Civil War itself.

O'Neill, the Irish alchemist who tries to enslave Whitehead and his friends, is clearly based on the English monarch Charles I. Like Charles, O'Neill is an arrogant man who claims not only total earthly power, but the right to pass judgment on men and to interfere with the cosmos itself. Just as Charles I saw himself as chosen by God (not the people) to rule as an absolute monarch, so O'Neill sees himself as a god on earth.

Whitehead, the timid religious scholar who attempts to bring O'Neill to justice, represents the Puritan conscience of England. His evolution in the film from a meek, submissive cowardly man to a military hero parallels the way the Puritans themselves evolved from a hunted, despised minority to a powerful army of spiritual and political authority, able to recreate England in their own image.

What the movie does is not just to imitate history but to reflect on its deeper meaning. Notice how the earthy, ignorant common soldiers switch their allegiance in the course of the nightmarish conflict in the field. At first they feel great contempt for Whitehead, the Puritan. They ridicule his "soft hands" and laugh when he is degraded and tortured and forced to run on a leash like a dog. In the same way, the English of Shakespeare's time (like Shakespeare himself) tended to regard the Puritans as a joke. But over time, as O'Neill proves more and more arrogant and unstable, the soldiers (like the English common people) begin to respond to Whitehead's efforts to awaken their sense of justice and their own moral dignity. By the end of the film, even the lowliest and most ignorant of the soldiers is willing to sacrifice his own life in Whitehead's cause, and Whitehead himself has changed from a pitiful outsider to the leader of the tiny band of "rebels." The fall of O'Neil parallels the fall of Charles I, just as the rise of Whitehead mirrors the success of the Puritan revolution.

'A Field in England' is exactly the film it tells you it's going to be: set entirely within said field, it tells the story of a group of soldiers from the English Civil War going mad from a combination of (the 17th century version of) shell-shock, their own religious beliefs, and an unhealthy dose of magic mushrooms. It's brilliantly acted, imaginatively shot and scripted, and yet, having watched it, I find it very hard to say what it's actually about. Stylistically, and atmospherically, it's coherent; yet its artistic success is, apparently intentionally, not supported by logic. I think it does what it sets out to do; but what exactly that is, it's harder to say.

I was really excited for Ben Wheatley's latest film. I absolutely loved Kill List and proclaimed it as the best British horror film since Eden Lake (which I love) and when I saw the trailer for A Field in England I thought that it looked right up my street. The trailer was packed with weird imagery and great music and when I realised that it was going to be on the TV I almost fainted (OK a bit of an exaggeration there, but I was very excited). People keep saying that releasing a film on DVD, TV and on the cinema is the future, but I'm not convinced. It might work better for small low-budget films like this but with a highly anticipated Hollywood blockbuster? It would definitely lose money and Hollywood would not be happy. But anyway that's another debate. I decided to catch A Field in England on the TV via recorder and watched it with much anticipation... I was disappointed.

One of my biggest problems with the film is that it is very slow. A good 40 minutes of the film is dedicated to a group of deserters talking and walking. Don't get me wrong, I love a bit of character development, but 40 minutes of little action outside a man having a poo in a field is just too tiresome. However, there were a few funny moments. Things get a little more interesting when Wheatley's favourite, Michael Smiley comes in to the story. He's quite a menacing character who successfully shakes things up a bit. There's also a really great weirdly intriguing moment where a character exits a tent in slow motion with a rope attached to them which promises good things. However, soon after things get boring again with talking and digging.

I also found some of it quite difficult to follow, due to the Olde English dialogue, but I may be on my own there, as I'm a bit thick. Things start to get interesting when a character gorges on a load of magic mushrooms and we are treated to a wonderfully weird hallucinogenic trip, which must be the closest thing to being on hallucinogens since David Lynch's mesmerising Inland Empire. There are loads of flashing images, weird imagery and an unsettling droning score to go with it and it's undeniably unique. I've seen some weird films (weirdest being Conspirators of Pleasure) and this sequence is unlike anything I've seen before. After this things get incomprehensible and it's very difficult to follow.

Normally I would enjoy a Lynchian mind F but it started to feel monotonous and dull at times. Although, I did enjoy the beautifully shot shootout at the end. The film is very stylish, the black and white works very well, the directing is enchanting and the editing is impeccable at times. The film just needed a much thicker plot to go with it all and then there would be a winner. It's something I definitely need to see again to fully appreciate, but as it stands now my feelings towards it are very mixed. Love it or hate it, it's a haunting film that will stay with you for a few days at least which isn't such a bad thing. Is it?

Many people may highly disagree with this sentiment, but I believe 'A Field in England' to be a masterpiece. It is a mind-blowing wartime odyssey that pushes the boundaries of narrative cinema, filled with shocks and surprises at nearly every turn. Experimenting with editing and filmmaking techniques to the point of psychedelic madness, Ben Wheatley crafts one of the most successfully surreal works of cinema I have thus far seen. Everything from the often hilarious writing to the hypnotic score is finely injected with intense talent and, in my opinion, enormous entertainment value. The amount of thrills and laughs in this movie totally subverts the idea that art house cinema is often "boring." This film is so alive and free and refuses to surrender to most cinematic norms, and yet it still follows a coherent narrative with memorable and enjoyable characters and genuine suspense; it nearly reaches the heights of a David Lynch masterpiece in terms of its ability to mix radical experimentation and surrealism with an engaging and cohesive story. Since Lynch is by far my favourite filmmaker, that is high praise. Anyone who is willing to be confused, appalled, and oddly amused owes it to his or herself to see this insane work of cinematic psychedelia.

A Field in England is most notable for being the first British film to be simultaneously released across every format on the same night. It has been released theatrically, pay-per-view, on DVD and on free television. It's a pretty audacious move and one that I hope works out for the film-makers as it could be a new way for left-field films to get the go-ahead to get made at all. It also reminded me of what it used to be like in the days before video recorders when I was a little kid. Whenever a movie came on TV it was a cultural event as a large percentage of the population sat down to watch it at the same time – we couldn't record it to watch it later or pause it to go and make a cup of tea we simply had to make time for it at the given moment and watch. I obviously wouldn't swap the flexibility we have nowadays but there was something to be said for sharing a movie at the same time as millions of others. And in a sense, the simultaneous cinema and TV release of A Field in England brings back this scenario and for that I am quite thankful.

The film itself? Well, it's a quite difficult one to accurately judge on a single viewing, as it was pretty confusing on the whole. Director Ben Wheatley said that he wanted to transport the viewer into the world of Civil War England with little exposition to explain what was going on. He wanted us to enter a world where the characters do things that would be second nature to them without actually explaining to us why they were doing them. It's a reasonable enough idea as events in the film appear somewhat surreal as a result. Having said that, I think it's obvious that the story is bizarre regardless of this. It involves an alchemist's assistant and some soldiers fleeing a battle and meeting an ominous cavalier in a field. The latter is looking for some unspecified treasure and he uses these men to find it. Throw in some magic mushrooms to complicate matters and you have one very weird movie.

I'm not 100% certain what to make of it on one viewing. It frustrated me a bit I have to admit, as it didn't necessarily make the most of the sinister possibilities inherent in its storyline. And by the end I really wasn't all that sure what had just happened. But it did intrigue me a little and I would be interested in returning to it at some later point. The cinematography was very good at times, while the soundtrack had an interesting mix of medieval drums, folk and ambient electronica. Acting was good enough with Reece Shearsmith of The League of Gentlemen always a welcome presence, while Michael Smiley was good as the cavalier. I'm not entirely convinced by A Field in England at the minute but I feel like unique films of this type should at least be encouraged in the UK so for that reason I am going to cut it some slack.