A Field In England

Ben Wheatley’s new film is a psychedelic tale of the English Civil War, shot in stark monochrome using a combination of digital lenses, giving a rich, textured depth of field, and experimental, macroscopic close-ups. It bears several of Wheatley’s stylstic trademarks – dry, sardonically witty dialogue; stomach-churning violence; and a painterly eye for the English countryside – but achieves something quite different from his first three features.

The cast is on fine form. Peter Ferdinando’s foul-mouthed cockney is a joy, relishing lines like: “Haven't you ever seen a man taking a shit before?” Smiley’s grim, dark-eyed villain recalls Vincent Price in the Witchfinder General. Shearsmith, as our hapless protagonist, veers from naïve, fish-out-of-water to bug-eyed, psilocybin-fuelled maniac with an assured charm.

Like in Sightseers, the countryside is the star. Wheatley’s rippling grass fields, earthy textures and – when the tripping starts in earnest – kaleidoscopic cross-cuts and dissolves create a powerful sense of the period, recalling Aguirre, the Wrath of God’s bleak naturalism and Valhalla Rising’s theatrical psychedelia. [Bram E. Gieben]