A Field in England (2013)

[regwec]

Has anyone here seen this bizarre, disturbing, inexplicable film?

If not, I shall save my fingertips for imdb, as much as I hate to do that.

 

[Marvolo]

Ive wanted to watch it for a while.

 

[regwec]

We must talk once you do.

 

[Silvermoth]

I've seen it and you're right it is disturbing but quite fascinating until the last half hour or so

 

[regwec]

You mean the shoot out sequence? I thought the resolution of that was quite powerful, and then it got more weird still...

 

[Silvermoth]

I loved the way they kept doing live action versions of renaissance art. It's was quite cleverly made, I'll admit that

 

[chamber-music]

I've seen it. I live the visuals and the performances.

 

[regwec]

Some questions I had, then:

Spoiler

1) Was the field in another world? It was reached (and, ultimately, exited) through a huge bank of briars, through which the characters seemed to be invisible. This accords with a lot of fairy-tale lore, where "secret doors" into other realms are common. The strange scene where the men pulled the wooden stump with the rope showed it reeling them in, somehow, too.

2) In that scene, were the men actually being reeled in, or were they (unwittingly) circling the stump again and again, in some kind of magic ritual? O'Neil appears immediately afterwards, so it is arguable that the business with the stump was in some way the cause.

3) What happened in the tent? I have seen suggestions that it was a brutal rape, or alternatively that it was a vision of hell. It's importance to the theme of the story seems to be illustration of the concept of "invisible" domination, either by magic (which is fraudulent) or by social structures (which are breaking down in the Civil War: Whitehead is extremely servile and submissive, but is able to befriend a coarse Parliamentarian soldier, and ultimately rebels). But Whitehead seemed to be completely mesmerised afterwards, as if suffering from some kind of existential torture.

4) It seemed that whatever happened in the tent marked the moment at which Whitehead's prima facie authority over O'Neil reversed. That authority finally passes when the tent blows away and Whitehead declared himself to be his own man. Which caused which?

5) Was the "ill planet" that seemed to be threatening the world actually the same as O'Neil's mirror? The object we see repeatedly breaking looks like it could be either, or both.

6) Did any of it happen at all? Both "Friend's" return from the dead, and the moment where all the friends are reunited at the end, hint that it might all have been a strange hallucination, either from the mushrooms or from PTSD. Or was the moment at the end Whitehead clambering into yet another world?