Update: I am watching "The Shout", another British magical/psychodrama, and the critical remarks about what is going on in that film helped me better appreciate this one. It's still a "7" to me, but a very strong "7" (maybe 7.4).
First of all, the movie looks amazing, even (especially?) in black and white. The cinematography, the lighting, the staging, the props, the costumes...the movie draws you in and turns what was probably a fairly mundane set of hedgerows and wheat-fields into a deranged mystic nightmare. So props for that.
However, there is such a thing as a movie (or any other work of art) being so loaded with so much symbolism that it becomes opaque and inaccessible to anyone who isn't up on the featured field of philosophy or political or religious thinking, and "A Field In England" sins mightily in this regard.
I read enough Robert Anton Wilson, etc, to have some familiarity with the workings and 'inner meanings' of alchemy, and I understood that every character here (including the movie itself) was a symbol/metaphor/simile for various points of view and political/religious beliefs. But after a certain point, the plot seemed to stick its head up its nether regions and just churn around for a while. The net effect was a weird cross between a medieval "mystery play", "Waiting For Godot", Kafka's "The Trial", and the scene in "Monty Python and The Holy Grail" where one mud-smeared peasant offers the other one "a lovely bit of filth".
Now, I personally think that's what the director and the screenwriter were going for. And I commend their willingness to make the effort and to make a highly non-commercial, hard-core "art house" movie. But was the end result worth it? Not to me...it ended up feeling empty and hollow.
I don't regret the time and effort I made to watch and try to "process" this movie...but I don't think I need (or want) to see it again.
First of all, the movie looks amazing, even (especially?) in black and white. The cinematography, the lighting, the staging, the props, the costumes...the movie draws you in and turns what was probably a fairly mundane set of hedgerows and wheat-fields into a deranged mystic nightmare. So props for that.
However, there is such a thing as a movie (or any other work of art) being so loaded with so much symbolism that it becomes opaque and inaccessible to anyone who isn't up on the featured field of philosophy or political or religious thinking, and "A Field In England" sins mightily in this regard.
I read enough Robert Anton Wilson, etc, to have some familiarity with the workings and 'inner meanings' of alchemy, and I understood that every character here (including the movie itself) was a symbol/metaphor/simile for various points of view and political/religious beliefs. But after a certain point, the plot seemed to stick its head up its nether regions and just churn around for a while. The net effect was a weird cross between a medieval "mystery play", "Waiting For Godot", Kafka's "The Trial", and the scene in "Monty Python and The Holy Grail" where one mud-smeared peasant offers the other one "a lovely bit of filth".
Now, I personally think that's what the director and the screenwriter were going for. And I commend their willingness to make the effort and to make a highly non-commercial, hard-core "art house" movie. But was the end result worth it? Not to me...it ended up feeling empty and hollow.
I don't regret the time and effort I made to watch and try to "process" this movie...but I don't think I need (or want) to see it again.