A Field in England (2013)

well this is the third time i have tried to watch this film and this time i forced myself ,literally forced myself to watch it till the end. so here is my take on this film. a group of soldiers from a British civil war all with cowardly characters and an intuitive bravery for greed (a treasure is deeply implied) in a field in England. well that's it really , add a few toilet and sexual references and bad acting then that is all there is ,did i forget to mention mushrooms and a totally unbelievable reece shearsmith (league of gentleman fame) wasted on this dross.not a film i would recommend to the sane and serious film viewers ,but someone did get stung by nettles hence i gave it a very generous 4

Fmovies: An undoubtedly interesting idea- civil war soldiers fleeing a battle encounter madness and witchcraft- directed by Britain's most "thrilling" young director should be a recipe for cinematic gold. The critics found it pretentious enough to unanimously praise, but I -and to judge from the commenters here- many others find it less than satisfactory.

For a start the writing, pacing and direction is far from "Thrilling". The dreary and undramatic opening scene sets the tone badly. We do not see what battle these men are supposedly fleeing and they may as well have been out for a country walk. There is no sense of danger or fear of being discovered and executed for desertion, they merely meet and decide to go to a pub.

What little energy there is in this opening is by having a character f-ing and blinding in a very modern way. This lack of authenticity hangs over the film, the exception being Reece Shearsmith who tries to impart a genuine 17th century earnestness into his part but does not have sufficient screen presence to carry the film.

From the start, the film moves slowly. There is a longwinded description by Shearsmith of his occupation then a rather pointless scene of one of the men emptying his bowels in a field. Nice!

The 'action' begins some 20 minutes in with an opaque and confusingly shot scene of them trying to hand plough a field. Have they never heard of horses?

Being in black and white doesn't help the clarity. I normally love b&w films but I could not see the reason for its use here, except to appear more profound than it actually is. The cinematography is flat and manages to make the English countryside look ordinary rather than beautiful or mysterious.

OK, it's been 9 hours since I watched this movie so it may be too soon to score as is usually the case with Wheatley's movies.

This is a trip, and not a nice trip, Michael Smiley and Reece Shearsmith are exceptional in parts, the photography is simply stunning but the whole film was a let down for me. The critics will love it, but I feel this is the movie some directors make as if to say "I'm hot, I'll do what I like'.

It's pretentious and very self indulgent, but i must say THAT TENT SCENE...WOW, the use of soundtrack (Blanck Mass, Chernobyl, Shearsmith's screams, the slow motion, 4 minutes of cinema which blew me away, unfortunately the other 80 odd minutes didn't

A Field in England fmovies. Ben Wheatley is an enigmatic and ambiguous director, though understandably very polarizing because of such. By my experience, his films take several viewings to totally appreciate, but when that time comes, it's a treat.

Field in England expertly subverts expectations of a trippy and hallucinatory experience by being filmed in stark, gorgeous, black and white cinematography. It also subverts the expectations that come with a period war film by not focusing on warfare and adding eccentric anachronisms and startling stylistic sequences. The performers are all excellent in their roles, and the story does an incredible job of maintaining its strange and ancient-feeling British folkloric fairy-tale roots.

Certainly one of the most dazzlingly original and unique genre movies to be released in quite some time.

This movie is about ninety minutes of purgatory, I think.

Four men from the time period of Oliver Cromwell, I think, during a battle, I think, escape the perceived carnage by falling through a rural hedge. They form a four-man band and in a weary, bedraggled condition, trudge a field with ale on their mind. What follows then is plain and simple, puzzlement.

After spending an hour figuring out what I had just viewed I've plumped for, what you reap in life is what you sow in the afterlife.

I also watched the director's vague explanation of what the film is about and I am none the wiser. I think my assessment will at least give a future viewer something to mull over.

4/10

I've seen and enjoyed the last few films from Wheatley – not to the point that I love him but certainly to the point that I know he will bring me something interesting as a total package. He seems to do "brooding tone" very well while also engaging with plots, dark humor and generally well shot films. This one starts on the same way, moving characters into place and setting up some weird supernatural scenario which appears to be building and building. I was engaged by this but once we reach a certain point, it appears that this changes and it becomes almost nothing about a narrative flow and entirely about the visual and stylistic chaos of the final third.

Plot wise the film delivers nothing in this part. Characters who were dead show up, violent deaths occur, massive visions and tripping out. Those that defend the film say that you just need to go with this and that perhaps those that don't just don't like this sort of experience; I would point to 2001, it delivers content like this but does so in a way that makes sense and fits with the plot. In this case it is hard not to see it as being done for the sake of it and this is partly because the film is generally very aesthetically pleasing. The staged shots look great, the weird ideas are presented in a way that works (the two main "on a rope" scenes), the music produces a great sense of dread and generally it is a very well shot film. So when it offers nothing in the narrative sense, it is hard not to think that perhaps it has been focusing on the style all along and that any sense of a plot was merely just to get it where it needed to be so it could unleash stylistically.

Don't get me wrong, I liked it from this point of view but even having some structure or some basic narrative flow would have made it a good film, not just one that feels like the director was playing with how it looks and sounds. The cast deliver what is asked of them very well and their involvement is total, there are no bad performances here and I really liked the "small cast, small space" idea. Problem is that none of them have characters, just moments. They are great in this scene and in the next, but nothing bridges them. Indeed this is true of the whole film. Read the positive reviews here – they talk about how awesome a certain scene was or how great a certain visual trick was, but they really are not so clear about what was good about the film as a whole. Truth is I agree – there are lots of good individual moments, because the snippets are all cool to look at and very well delivered, but this isn't a music video, a fashion shoot or a 20 second commercial, it is a feature film that proposes to have a plot – but only proposes it.

For what it does well the film should be commended, but to ride on aesthetics alone for 90 minutes is a big ask and it is beyond this film. The ideas and structures probably cover it for fir the first half, but after this it really goes all out for the looks and style and, once you've had this and only this for 10 minutes then it starts getting boring without substance – and unfortunately once you hit that wall, there is probably still 20-30 minutes left to go, meaning it gets tiresome and a bit annoying. Worth a look for what it does well, but even on this level it has its limits – if this film is what he wanted to do then it would have worked much, much better as a 45 minute short.