Clare Hawkins

It is an excellent film and in part a love letter to ancient Cornwall. If you want to understand the film then you can read on for a spoiler…, The directors previous film was a film about Cornwall. It was previously colonised and now gentrified by the English middle classes. Looking at you Rick Stein 👀 It was a film about the incredulity of the middle class English that the Cornish people were not grateful for their bags of gold and tourist traffic. This is a film from the POV of the land itself. There are a few clues in this film as to the ending. The date it’s heading towards, the news report at the opening, the pamphlet she is reading and an old folkloric theory about the origin of the standing stones. ———- spoilers below —————— The pamphlet the woman is reading is from the 70’s and told about the impeding ecological crisis. Thus the recording of the temperatures and the logging of horrific albeit natural changes. The island lives with the ghosts of the people who died there. Miners, maids, fisherman, the girl who fell through the roof, the baby and the priest. Right at the beginning you hear a story on the news about the vandalising of a monument to a fisherman who died. This was told from the date being 2023 calling back to the 70’s when the man died and the statue was erected. So time isn’t fixed here it jumps around. You see at the end she writes after May Day (no change no change). Incidentally the date here corresponds to the finale date in the Wicker Man movie (which I adore). Did the woman really ever live on the island? Who knows. The scar on her belly may give a clue as it also corresponds to one on the stone and the girl. If you also look up the theory of giants as standing stones that may give another clue. In any case my ancestors stretching back thousands of years are from Kernow and I think this film will be one of my favourites for years to come. I have never seen a film quite like it. Pur da dhywgh!