George Mackay in a strange time travel drama

A ghostly story that is not exactly a ghost story, Nevada Rose is a generally imaginative film by director Mark Jenkin. But here, he has recognizable actors and a much more pronounced story than in his last feature, the completely enigmatic Enys for men (2022). This does not mean that the plot is simple. He backs up more than once on himself, and it is essentially a film of existential questions wrapped in elegant images and a haunted atmosphere.

It is also a strange film of temporal travel which greatly benefits from its convincing and earth-to-terre performance by George Mackay (1917 And The beast). He anchors the film in reality as Nick, a room whose fishing village in Cornwall collapses. He obtained the grocery store of a food bank and the roof was fleeing his wife and young daughter. Callum Turner (The boys of the boat) is Liam, a stranger who drifts in this city, without a place to sleep and without money.

And on the shore, a small fishing boat called the Nevada rose which was lost at sea 30 years previously floated. Two men disappeared with him. One was Tina’s husband (Rosalind Eleazar), the mother of two adult girls without memory of their father. The other was the son of the neighbors of Nick, the Richards (Mary Woodvin and Adrian Rawlins). Ms. Richards, aged and confused, insists for Nick: “My boy returns home”. Its ravaged look, with long white hair, and its declaration in the shape of a seer is a carefully placed index that there will be supernatural touches to come. (Jenkin himself seems haunted by lost fishermen, who appear in each of his three characteristics so far.)

From the start, Jenkin combines his typical imaginary style with the story of Nick and Liam, who go out with the skipper of the recovered boat as fishermen. The film opens with a series of plans made to look like an old rough film, with close -ups of rusty chains and broken wood, which we make later is the old rotten boat.

But where Enys for men – The story of a single woman on an island that sees visions from previous centuries – is a series of scenes without before, Nevada Rose has convincing elements of suspense. While Nick goes to sea, he finds a sculpted warning on the wall of his berth: go down from the boat now. And when they come back to the ground, Nick and Liam meet in 1993. The food bank that Nick visited is a post office. Whether men are lost in the past forever or can come back to the present by removing at sea is the question they will have to test.

Mackay throws a haunted look from the start from the start, not surprising for a man who has trouble feeding his family. Time travel suggests retrospectively that there may be more delay, but performance is particularly moving because Mackay never wink at any other possibility in previous scenes. Nick’s confusion when he landed in the past is painful, just like his desperate wish to return to his wife and daughter. Turner has less to work with foreigners whose history we do not know, and too often Liam seems empty, but the character becomes more intriguing in the 1993 scenes. Eleazar is fluid in both deadlines, in a performance that makes us intelligently guess how much Tina knows or wants to know.

A photograph of the two lost men is a recurring image, sometimes a real photo in houses these days, sometimes simply on the screen. What happened to them? Nick wakes up dreams, which can be memories. The ambiguity is deliberate because the film raises questions of identity and family connections.

Although the style of focusing on images rather than Jenkin’s story is decreased, it is always important – and sometimes an awkward adjustment with the story. There are far too many blows from transported, evisible and just looking at a bed of ice. But the style itself is impressive. Jenkin is almost a team of a single man, as a writer, director, model and editor in chief. He also designed the sound, a major element here, with beats and ticks and a disturbing music note that has just held in the air. Like the appearance of Mrs. Richards, the sound landscape adds a shade of the supernatural without engaging in horror tropes. And the images themselves, like the shiny and bright colors of the boat at sea, are elegant compositions even when they are not well enough with the story.

Jenkin declared in a declaration of director that his film is concerned about “personal sacrifice, the power of the community and what it means to be part of society today”. These themes do not always register, but that should not matter because his eloquent artistic talent always invites interpretation.