cohnin5

Harvest (2024) is a drama (not a horror) about the dispossession of traditional rural communities from capitalist exploitation by the landowning class, and the internal conflicts within such communities. It is based on a book of the same name set in England, but adapted to film by Greek director Athina Tsangari and US producer Joslyn Barnes with the setting changed to Scotland and the historical period stripped of specificity. The film offers an exoticist generalised imaginary of rural island Scotland, based on something between the extended universe of The Wicker Man and the days of the witch trials, which I would speculate are the limit of the historical and cultural research that went into this film.

The central plot of the film, the employment of a mapmaker by the feudal overlord of the island in order to facilitate the exploitation of the land and remove the labour from it, is an interesting enough story of conflict between innovation and traditional community. Watching these themes explored through the 16mm cinematography, filmed on location in Argyll, Scotland, and some beautiful lines of dialogue, could be a nice film. But unfortunately, I am Scottish, albeit a lowlands, bourgeois Scot, and watched the film at one of few screenings in Scottish cinemas. My desire to see specificity, or at least some attempt at naturalism in the dialogue and depiction of quotidian life, therefore took over from any capacity to view the film's merits objectively. However, I feel that this criticism is appropriate because, at least in the screening I attended, the audience benefited from English subtitles. This suggested to me that the film's producers felt the use of authentic Scottish language was particularly exotic and important to the film's setting. So it's by this metric that I evaluated the film.

Firstly, I was somewhat impressed by the film's use of actors who could do authentic Scottish accents, although these were Glaswegian accents and surely nothing like how the crofters of ye olde times spoke. Some of the insults thrown by two characters who were pilloried for burning "Master Kent's" barn even got some decent laughs from the audience, when they stoically refused to be nice to their captors who offered them mercy. It makes a nice change from films about Scottish history performed by actors who can't accurately imitate any Scottish accent.

Then, there was everything else: the costumes that were Dark Ages bordering on Industrial Revolution. The neighbouring villager who had her hair cut off and inexplicably spoke Brazilian Portuguese as if it were a mystic jargon, despite some expository dialogue right at the start of the film emphasising the island's remoteness. (This character also in one scene pisses on the main character's face). The confusion between the Scottish history of the Highland Clearances, referenced by a mention of the villagers being replaced by sheep; and the English history of the Inclosure Acts, which was the setting of the Jim Crace novel on which the film is based, referenced by mentions of "the commons". The rather implausible claim by one villager on the island never to have seen the sea, which at least for me brought to mind stories of working class Glaswegians who had never seen the sea despite living only 10 miles away. Plausible but unusual of Glaswegians, not plausible at all of Scottish islanders.

Then the moment that the "Master's" cousin who owns the island's industry arrives, dressed dandyishly and with a posh English accent, suddenly the film begins to feel like a real costume drama. Perhaps this character was more closely based on the source material?

I feel that I wasted my time watching Harvest. It was misleadingly described as a horror, which it is not, and I left without any good reason to remember this film. It pales in comparison to The Wicker Man, from which it adopts stereotypes in its depiction of Scottish island life. Where Wicker Man did contextualise itself within Scottish social history, despite not being a serious historical film, Harvest refuses to indicate what its location and historical period are, opting instead for a generalised place and time, comprised of stereotypes about Scotland taken from horror films like Wicker Man and about the witch trials. Where Wicker Man had a clearly defined plot with an ending open to interpretation, Harvest has a slightly messy narrative but a relatively clear message.

I don't wish to be pedantic about every film set in Scotland, but this was filmed on location in Scotland and cast Scottish actors, so the producers clearly felt that authenticity was important. In fact, they knew that the script required authenticity, but they only delivered a surface-level form of it. If the aim of the film was to make a point about traditional rural communities, then this film has failed.

I just went to the 2nd bill of 2014's McLaren award and saw this. I voted it No.1, having been largely unimpressed by the attempts at narratives given by most of the other films. This film is about the relationships between two middle-aged brethren and their old mother. The main character is called Richard and is quite a predictable hard done-by tragic hero. His brother Nick is the real goldmine: he gets all the best lines. He's the shallow show-off who always appears to have better luck and is a smoother guy than his brother Richard. The story is this corny thing about the two men caring for their dying mother. The paintings on the walls that come out with papier mache limbs onto a 3D set are a joy to watch. I'll be honest and say that the idea is by no means original, but it's a challenging thing to pull off and the filmmakers should be commended for it.