Dark River (2017)

Directed by: Clio Barnard | 89 minutes | drama | Actors: Ruth Wilson, Jonah Russell, Paul Robertson, Sean Bean, Una McNulty, Esme Creed-Miles, Aiden McCullough, Olivia Brennan, Mark Stanley, Joe Dempsie, Mike NOble, Steve Garti, Dean Andrews, Kenton Foster, Jake Hayward

‘Dark River’ is a film about returning to where you came from, not so much because you choose it, but because the circumstances demand it. Thirty-something Alice (Wilson) has fled the family sheep farm in Yorkshire and returns after 15 years to continue it after father’s death. ‘So far, so good’. Well, not so good. Director Barnard tries to make it clear to us through tormented facial expressions that it is not only death that torments Alice.

An impressionistic sequence of images of nature reveals an adequate filmmaker who builds up, without making much effort for a plot-technical tension arc. Barnard chooses a naturalistic visual language: the culling of animals, the skinning of a rabbit. The daily affairs of peasant life, which make it clear that reference is made to forces stronger than human will: those of (natural) violence and fate.

Some see this as a higher order from a philosophical perspective. You could also say that the sheep farmer exhibits limited emotional capacities in her relationship with the human world. When Alice inquires of brother Joe (Stanley; the only other elaborate character) about Father’s passing, all she asks is, “Did he suffer?” In bed alone she cries neurotically.

Raised in Yorkshire himself, Barnard refuses to choose for the viewer – another choice. The landscape is that of ‘James Herriot’, but under high voltage. The subcutaneous electricity of a secret. A secret that reveals an ambiguous relationship with the father, continuing in a conflict with the clumsy Joe over formal succession.

Before halfway through, you wonder how to proceed, although the only thing you know is known from the synopsis. A filmmaker should always be aware of spoilers; nevertheless, a film must not lose its dramatic tension, and it only partially succeeds. It continues to struggle with an undercurrent, in which the concentrated Wilson (‘Jane Eyre’) just doesn’t go under.