Tuesday, March 04, 2014

Review of "A Field in England"

A muddle without form, point or aesthetic value. Five men (I think it's five - it's a bit hard to tell) blunder in to each other in a field while escaping from an unnamed battle in the English Civil War. It is in black and white, so we know that it's arty. There is a sort of narrative. One of the men seems to be a weedy fearful scholar, implausibly sent by his master to apprehend a tough and frightening Irish man who has stolen a manuscript from the master's library.

The manuscript apparently describes how to find treasure in this very field. The Irish man, who turns out to be an alchemist, makes the others his prisoners and forces them to dig for the treasure. At various times some of the men seem to kill each other, but they don't stay dead. Those who are killed re-appear in the film to no particular surprise. Is there a magical or supernatural explanation, or is it all a hallucination brought on by the mushrooms we see them eating. It's hard to know and ever harder to care.

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