This Blessed Plot
The British filmmaker Marc Isaacs blends fact with fiction in his pastoral docudrama featuring a Chinese filmmaker exploring the past in Essex.
Marc Isaacs is a documentarian whose recent work has taken a turn that makes his films increasingly individual in style. The first time that I came across his work was early in 2013 when I viewed his feature film The Road: A Story of Life and Death (his earlier pieces had been shorts and items for television). That film looked at the lives of five immigrants from four countries all living in London and immediately revealed Isaacs to be deeply humanitarian in his outlook. Impressive at its best, that piece was not without certain structural weaknesses and was presented in a standard style. It foreshadows This Blessed Plot only in the way in which its portrait of Cricklewood incorporated references to the old Roman road which led there and had been known as Watling Street.
By 2020 Isaacs had moved on and it was then that he gave us his best feature film to date, The Filmmaker’s House. In contrast to its predecessor, Isaacs chose to give us a film that brought into documentary cinema elements of acting, albeit that this was done without employing professional actors and without destroying the sense of authenticity regarding what was being expressed. Although this kind of mix was in the air (the American film Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets had become a talking point in that respect), I described Isaacs as a truly distinctive talent yet was left wondering if the mode that he had adopted in The Filmmaker’s House was only workable as a one-off.
That question is now answered even if not decisively by the arrival of This Blessed Plot which is introduced as a documentary film pageant from Thaxted. That small town in Essex is indeed central to this new work which is even more of a hybrid than its predecessor fusing documentary footage, characters played by non-professionals and ghostly presences, most notably that of Thaxted’s famous socialist vicar Conrad Noel who lived from 1869 to 1942. Written by Adam Ganz who also collaborated on The Filmmaker’s House, the concept for this new work has been developed devotedly by all concerned. Nevertheless, I find the result less satisfying although I do warm to the dedication that is always apparent in this off-beat enterprise.
Even though This Blessed Plot is very much its own thing, it does seem to me to have a precursor. It is mentioned in passing that Pasolini shot some footage for his 1972 film The Canterbury Tales in Thaxted but what is invoked here is not that piece but the remarkable 1944 feature made by Powell and Pressburger, A Canterbury Tale. They were making a film about what Britain was then fighting to preserve – its character and culture as rooted in its geography and its history - and they came up with their own kind of hybrid, a story of Britain in wartime which, set in Kent, looked back to Chaucer and the Pilgrims’ Way and made Canterbury Cathedral its key link between past and present. In a way which echoes that, Isaacs introduces us to contemporary characters shot in colour (most notably a young Chinese filmmaker named Lori who is visiting Thaxted and a number of inhabitants including her landlady Maggie) while also incorporating existing black-and-white footage from times past. The latter element borrows from the 1939 short about Thaxted entitled The Ripe Earth made by the Boulting Brothers in the late thirties, extends to scenes of folk dancing which remain a feature today and includes actual images of the Reverend Noel whose ghost is heard speaking to Lori (the voice is that of the screenwriter Adam Ganz). There is another ghost too, one who is actually seen, this being Sue (Susan Mallendine). Her husband, Keith (Keith Martin), is the central figure here along with a best friend known as Uncle (Paul Bettie) who has just completed a jail sentence for fraud. A story builds up through these characters when it emerges that Keith, absorbed in his all-embracing support for the Arsenal football team, had never suspected that his late wife, the seemingly loyal and loved Sue, had betrayed him with Uncle.
William Blake’s words are quoted in Thaxted Church and the film’s title is heard when Keith speaks lines by Shakespeare taken from Richard II. But even more central to the film is the music featured, that being the work of Gustav Holst who lived in Thaxted between 1917 and 1925. He wrote the famous suite The Planets there and was a friend of Conrad Noel. Thus, it is that This Blessed Plot constantly suggests connections between past and present and takes the opportunity to let us hear the views of Conrad Noel and to ponder their validity in the 21st century.
The mixture of styles may make sense but it can still feel odd and there is the weakness that the portrayal of Lori as a filmmaker looking for material to film in Thaxted does not carry any real conviction. Furthermore, the personal drama that develops although intended to be representative of human nature as it has always been emerges as a bit too individual to support the more general notion that the past and the present are not that much different. Indeed, some viewers may decide that the fusion of contrasted elements renders this a film more odd than satisfying. On a single viewing I partly share that feeling, yet I do warm to the off-beat vision that one finds in this film as it seeks to view life as a dance in which everybody joins in and always has. I can admire too the decision to opt for a relatively short length (75 minutes) but arguably what most binds the film together is its music. While the extracts from The Planets represent the most familiar music heard here, it is an unaccompanied composition that is at the heart of the film. The piece is Holst’s Op. 34, ‘This Have I Done For My True Love’, and it is when it is heard that past and present most genuinely come together as one.
MANSEL STIMPSON
Cast: Yingge Lori Yang, Keith Martin, Paul Bettie, Norman Cullis, Susan Mallendine, Margaret Catterall, Johnny Lyons, Anna Marie Johnson, Janice Cullis, Jed Isaacs, Bradley Bush, and the voice of Adam Ganz.
Dir Marc Isaacs, Pro Lydia Kivinen and Marc Isaacs, Screenplay Adam Ganz, Ph Marc Isaacs, Ed Marc Isaacs and Sarah Gonzalez Centeno.
Marc Isaacs Films/Andana Films/Ghost Pictures Ltd./Mville Studios-Verve Pictures.
75 mins. UK. 2023. UK Rel: 26 January 2024. Cert. 15.
