While this is titled Harvest, it could have just as easily been titled Ye Reap What Ye Sow. And I think that may tell you all you need to know about this dark drama.
Caleb Landry Jones plays Walter Thirsk, a member of a small community living under the rule of Master Kent (Harry Melling). The members of the community tend to generally keep themselves in the good graces of Master Kent, outsiders and transgressors are dealt with swiftly, and fairly, and there's a sense of finely-balanced harmony. Change is on the horizon though, which will come in the shape of Master Jordan (Frank Dillane).
Based on a book by Jim Crace, and I suspect it may work far better in book form than on the screen, this has been turned into a screenplay by Joslyn Barnes and director Athina Rachel Tsangari. Details are kept vague (there doesn't seem to be too many obvious markers for the time and location), but plenty of time is given to various interactions that show the changing state of the community, especially when it becomes clear that the place will not be a safe haven for everyone for much longer. It's interesting and thought-provoking enough, but ultimately undone by an excessive 133-minute runtime. I understand that this is a movie wanting people to hear the breathing of characters, to feel the mud and the sweat, to etsablish that symbiotic relationship between the workers and the land, but that can be done in a more bearable runtime.
Jones does well in the main role, and also does well with a Scottish accent. He's very ably supported by Melling, Dillane, and the likes of Rosy McEwen, Thalissa Teizeira, and Arinzé Kene (the latter two involved in the most memorable scene in the film). The cast are all very much up to the task assigned to them. It's just a shame that the task isn't better. Nobody feels pushed too far, and there are darker elements far too often hinted at without being overtly confirmed.
Maybe the fault doesn't lie with the film itself though. Maybe it's my own displeasure with the quickening regression and growing wealth disparity I am seeing every day. Harvest is a reminder that the attitudes we can observe now (the misjudged belief that someone having money automatically makes them better, the ways in which people fail to believe in their own power as they do their utmost to serve others for the sake of small breadcrumbs shaken off fine tablecloths) are attitudes that have been ingrained in large sections of the population because of historical injustices and unfair abuses of power.
I wanted to like Harvest, but I was probably hoping for something that didn't so closely parallel the here and now. That's on me. The film being overlong and not daring enough, however, is on Tsangari. It's a step back from her last film, the very good Chevalier, but she's still very much someone worth taking a chance on whenever she puts something out there.
6/10
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