A mysterious — and suspicious — run of ill fortune plagues a teenage girl and her mother and sister on their hillside farm in this folk story set in the dark hills of Wales during the industria...
WHAT I LIKED: To anyone not really paying attention, William McGregor's 'Gwen,' would simply seem to be a horror-inflected story of a teenager's peasant family in North Wales being ravaged by a series of mysterious tragedies. But this is a film with such a meticulous handle on its cinematic craft that every sight and sound that makes it out of the screen paints an eerie, horrifying picture which slowly reveals itself as serving one very emotive central theme indeed.
It begins by setting its scene perfectly with a few shots of two bubbly young sisters, only for it to then play out following the eldest of the two - a teenager hemmed in by the desolate landscape of each slate-grey mountain around her and every wrinkle on her mother's sheet-white face. The three of them spend their life doing duties and tending to their farm - only breaking for the ritualistic trek to church - but the lack of dialogue and the way the characters look at each other speaks so much of the strained relationship between them. Just one glance at the mother (Maxine Peake)'s face tells you everything you need to know about the tragedy and hardship she's already seen, and the way Gwen (played perfectly by Eleanor Worthington Cox) appears so wary and yet quietly caring around her speaks volumes, so when strange things start happening to the family it really hits home.
Gwen discovers their potatoes going to mush, their sheep becoming infected, she keeps hearing strange things at night and her mother begins having fits. Ulimately the whole thing begins to morph into something fairly horrorific with continuous horror-movie motifs such as watching camera angles, firey imagery and scary sound-design as the doors rattle and the empty vacuum of the surrounding landscape is heard with each whistle of wind and animal or human cry into the wilderness.
It's eerie stuff, but these strange happenings aren't the only mysterious players surrounding the family. Lords and businessmen of the local quarry also act in the shadows, making inaudible offers to Gwen's mother, watching from doorways and disappearing round corners with their slaves. These are all things we see from Gwen's perspective - we don't really know what's going on for a long time - but eventually it becomes very clear. Gwen is at first terrified and confused by all the strange things happening to her family, but in the end the film winds up being about her (and us along with her) uncovering who or what the real monsters are.
The doctor won't give Gwen the medicine she needs to help her mother, the family is widowed because the father has been sent off to fight a war, and the lords look to prosecute peasants for the smallest of offences. Eventually cracking her cold exterior, the mother bitterly says "steal a sheep and they'll take your hand. Steal a mountain and they'll make you a lord." What a line. Gwen learns who the real monsters are in the end, and it's far from anything supernatural. It's those bastards who are trying to buy her farm and take her home with no regard for her or her family's life. It's heart-wrenching - you care so much about Gwen because the film has done so much to develop her so brilliantly and concisely, and the final act in which her eyes are opened to the realities of her situation is rousing, upsetting and terrifying.
The rich are still taking from the poor today, and this film deals with that theme more emotively than almost any I can think of by seeing everything from a young woman's perspective and stripping it back to a time when the body of capitalism was stripped far back to the bone. This is an incredible film that unravels this central theme slowly but brilliantly through the membrane of an eerie, terrifying and gut-wrenching character-study, and the result is undoubtedly one of the best films of the last few years. What a debut from William McGregor, and what an underrated film this has been.
WHAT I DIDN'T LIKE: It's fairly polemic and it's unsettling viewing to be honest, so it may not sit so well with everyone.
VERDICT: A film that follows a teenage girl and her peasant family beset by a series of mysterious tragedies only for her to slowly open her eyes to the real monsters around her, William McGregor's 'Gwen,' is executed brilliantly and reveals its highly emotive central theme very effectively indeed.
