Family feuds, spats over inheritance and the archaism of primogeniture are always fertile ground for good stories. The Old Man and The Land is far from the first to take on these themes, but strong performances and an unusual format put a spin on the story.
Early on, The Old Man and The Land features a gruesome scene of a sheep giving birth. There’s no hiding the brutality, the rawness, of the process of life here. Although the farm is often painted in a beautiful light—the camera lingers on a field at sunrise, a lone horse in the fog, rain falling from leaves—the harsh reality of agricultural work is never far away. It’s almost refreshing; there’s a tendency, particularly with recent ‘trad’ content on the rise, for farm work to be romanticised until it barely resembles reality. Not here. The labour, manual, mental and emotional, that goes into looking after the land is a crucial part of the narrative and the nameless farmer’s characters.
The film is ambitious in its format, with no speech or interaction taking place on screen. Instead, we watch the farmer go about his work and his insular life while listening to voicemails from his two adult children. Later on, we’re party to conversation between the siblings over the phone and in the car, along with letters and speeches that may not have ever been uttered aloud. Emily Beecham (as Laura) and Rory Kinnear (as David) excel in their audio-only roles, while Roger Marten’s quietly compelling portrait of loss and regret is engaging in spite of its synecdochal quality—close-ups of hands and feet in motion, or a face in profile, keeping the audience at arm’s length.
There’s a cyclicality to the film. The farmer’s days look much alike: waking up before dawn to drive out over his land, feeding animals and repairing fences. Just as time keeps passing, the conversations we hear snippets from between father and child, brother and sister, are clearly well-trodden. David’s struggles with addiction come and go, their relationships with one another move between phases of understanding and vitriol, and the idea of inherited familial trauma is key to understanding the root of the trio’s dysfunction.
This is something explicitly addressed at the end of the film, where David writes a letter hoping that he can have, as an adult and a parent himself, a stronger, more meaningful relationship with his father. After being drip-fed information throughout the narrative, this monologue expands on why the children’s connection to their father is so fraught. A line is drawn from the man’s abusive childhood to the pressure of conventions he pushed onto his children, his alcoholism and the mistreatment of his wife, with David determined not to continue the cycle with his own child.
The amount of information revealed here is a little abrupt compared to the hints we’re given for the rest of the film, the snapshots and snippets that hint at a complete picture. While it’s necessary that we know more about the context of this family’s issues, it may have been more impactful to more evenly distribute these final puzzle pieces. At times, information delivery is nuanced and effective in its simplicity, but the film stumbles as it reaches the finish line.
Although the ending ostensibly ties up the narrative, there’s a sense of unease and frustration. Perhaps this is because we never see any direct confrontations between the characters, mediated as they are by calls and letters. As such, the conclusion of this tale may be unsatisfactory; the conflict all happens offscreen and we never hear the father’s side of the story, just see his muted reactions to voicemails.
The final shot of The Old Man and The Land is haunting, the farmer disappearing into the morning mist with his dog at his side. It lingers, soundtracked by unsettling strings, leaving you squinting into the distance and wondering whether you can still see him or just the impression he’s left. It continues to linger once the screen goes black.
The Old Man And The Land is out now in UK Cinemas
