A Year in a Field
Documentary meets poetry in Christopher Morris’s paean to nature.
It's an odd thing but the cinema releases in Britain programmed for late summer 2023 seem to be echoing the situation that occurs when waiting passengers find that two buses ultimately arrive simultaneously. As recently as 15th September the schedule put side by side two films that evoked the work of Japan's Yasujirō Ozu (the brilliant Fremont and the more uneven Love Life) and now we have another such case. It was also last week that the British documentary The Nettle Dress obtained a cinema release and now 21st September sees the arrival of another such film displaying a comparable poetic sensibility that is rare in the genre. The timing is not entirely helpful to Christopher Morris and his film A Year in a Field because I regard The Nettle Dress as something of a masterpiece whereas his film is less surefooted. Indeed, it could be that my rating here is slightly generous, but his film is so committed, so individual and at its best so accomplished that one wants to support it and to recommend it regardless of any shortcomings that it possesses.
Both The Nettle Dress and A Year in a Field are meditative works with a strong regard for nature and for the past but, whereas the former had an individual at it centre, the engaging Allan Brown, Christopher Morris opts to give us a film without a human being in sight. The location is Longstone Field a mere mile away from where Morris lives but, in keeping with the title, the film never moves away from this site near Carbis Bay in Cornwall. Central here is a stone monolith which, having stood for over 4000 years, feels like a sentinel. Around it barley grows and Morris filmed this area over a year from one winter solstice to another, 2020 to 2021. The images of the passing seasons are accompanied by a thoughtful voice-over commentary by Morris himself. He imparts his own knowledge talking about the soil, the lichens on the stone, the sky, the moon and the sea while also paying careful attention to slugs, snails and the like that contribute to the inner life of the field. The stone itself reminds us of the long history of our earth all the more potently because its origins are shrouded in mystery. The nearby sea evokes thoughts of ships that passed centuries ago, this land being the last of England as seen by those who sailed out into the Atlantic.
With 86 minutes to fill one might wonder if A Year in a Field could sustain interest and especially so since the feel of it is more minimalist than The Nettle Dress. But in the event there is no problem of that kind, the film being much aided by the fact that, as with its rival, the director is also the photographer and the editor and both films are of high quality in that respect – they also share the inclusion of a sensitive music score (this one by Sarah Moody) and an interest in folk song and folklore.
But, while both films have many concerns that are closely aligned, each takes its own path too and in this instance there is a strong concern about climate change. To some extent that comes naturally since any contemplation of nature and of the way it has always functioned inevitably leads to anxiety over what is happening to the environment today. At intervals throughout A Year in a Field Morris contrasts the scene that he is observing with reminders of disturbing events occurring at the same time in the wider world and he incorporates written quotations the sources of which range from Ursula K. Le Guin to Greta Thunberg. This is well and good up to a point, but then it intensifies and in the film’s concluding scenes it comes to feel too much. Most viewers will already share the views that Morris is espousing (it could be said that making this film is his own personal form of activism on the issue of climate change). In itself that's fine, but the point is reached when you feel an uncomfortable clash between the film’s poetry on the one hand and its polemic on the other. Nevertheless, the film could not be more heartfelt and its poetic qualities are distinguished indeed. They make it well worth seeing.
MANSEL STIMPSON
Dir Christopher Morris, Pro Denzil Monk, Screenplay Christopher Morris, Ph Christopher Morris, Ed Christopher Morris, Music Sarah Moody.
Bosena-Antiworlds Releasing.
86 mins. UK. 2023. UK Rel: 21 September 2023. Cert. 12A.
