Sheep farming is having a moment at the movies. Following closely on the heels of Irish-made documentary Notes from Sheepland, this experimental British drama also puts shepherding and farming right at the centre of its story, but with a quite different result. The Old Man and the Land, directed by Nicholas Parish, is the glummer of the two, offering a melancholy portrait of a rural family unravelling like an old jumper.
The elderly gent of the title (played by non-professional Roger Marten) never speaks a word throughout. Instead, we watch him tending to his flock, helping the ewes to lamb, walking the fields and doing all the daily drudgery of farm work while the soundtrack plays the answering-machine messages from his two grown children. Eldest child Laura (Emily Beecham) and younger son David (Rory Kinnear) are heard but never seen squabbling in person as they argue over who should inherit the land when Dad dies, while other monologues from each float in the air, bedded down with a keening, murmuring, cello-forward soundtrack composed by Evelyn Sykes.
Like many an aggrieved eldest sister around the world done over by primogeniture, Laura is annoyed that Dad will leave the farm to David even though she’s the one who actually knows something about farming, having spent years abroad working with goats and sheep. Troubled David, who has had a history of substance abuse, clearly has no intention of putting on the Barbour jacket of duty and will probably end up selling it off or turning it into – foul words to his father’s ears, it seems – a wedding venue.
Time passes in elliptical chunklets, and their views and feelings change, although their father just keeps going on opening gates, closing gates, and trudging about in wellies, so it’s all like listening to a radio play except you are watching visuals instead of getting on with doing the washing-up (which is what everyone does while listening to radio plays). What’s frustrating is that while sometimes we see the father listening to his phone and frowning, most of the time there’s little to no harmony or counterpoint between sound and vision. Also, exceptional as Kinnear and Beecham may be as actors, their spiels here sound over-rehearsed, which deadens the emotional impact of what might have been a bold, fresh approach to the drama.
• The Old Man and the Land is in UK cinemas from 20 September.
