Feeling suitably guilty after I'd requested its release for years beforehand, I finally got round to watching the Arrow release last night. I'm thankful to finally own it, and its certainly the best I've ever seen it look; I'll be surprised if there's ever a better release, but I stand by my disappointment at the extras when it was first announced. Whats there is valuable, but I can see myself picking up the French release for the interviews as any cast/crew input is sorely missed. Nevertheless, I encourage anybody on the fence to pick it up during the last few days of the Arrow BOGOF.
I think it's an extraordinary work, one that fits the description of "cinema of unease" - as New Zealand filmmaking has been described - more than any other. I've yet to visit New Zealand, but the setting felt both very familiar (as a Scot, I'm accustomed to dreich Highlands populated by sheep!) and alien. The characters make their living off the land - and it can take that life away, both literally and figuratively in the sense of total isolation from the rest of the world. While it is obvious that there is a world outside of the farm, Ward somehow makes you forget that fact at more than one point during the film's duration. The world is Toss, her mother, Ethan, Birdie, and the hills that are 'closing in on them'. It's similar to what I feel during Tarkovsky's Stalker and Tarr's The Turin Horse, though this film is a very different beast.
Another element of unease to Vigil is Toss' nascent sexuality and the way that this manifests itself. There's one particular scene where Toss sucks on Ethan's fingers, and not long afterwards her mother warns him to stay away from her daughter. I didn't pick up any suggestion outwith these points that Ethan was a paedophile, but took how the film associated him with violence and predation to be an expression of Toss' general fear of the outsider - this was the man who carried her father's dead body upon her back and proceeded to replace him in many ways. In the extras, Nick Roddick says that he thinks this scene would have been viewed differently in the 80s than it would be today. I'm not sure I follow that train of thought, but I wasn't around in the 80s!
The most convincing critical reading of the film that I've came across is a couple of paragraphs from Erin Harrington's
Women, Monstrosity and Horror Film: Gynaehorror, which helped me understand the title that Ward had settled on - "Vigil" - rather than the initial title of First Blood, Last Rites.
(
Following quotation from the Google Books preview:)
Toss takes it upon herself to act as protector of the land by standing vigil. [...] When Ethan docks a lamb's tail with a knife the blood spurts across Toss's face, marking her as a horrified wounded victim, a bloodied virgin, exposed suddenly and portentously to the grisly reality of the inevitable violence that accompanies maturation. Her mounting terror and confusion erupt during a powerful, almost apocalyptic storm when, wet and muddy, huddled in the shearing shed, she realises that she is bleeding from between her legs, and wonders if she is dying. Toss's traumatic menarche breaks her vigil; her waiting is over; Ethan leaves the farm. Toss's final appearance, as her family finally packs up and leaves the oppressive valley, is marked by a deliberate femininity that she actively disavowed as a pre-pubescent child.
I'd love to hear any other takes that people have.
