(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
"And now over to something completely different." It's not the first time I've started a movie review with the well-known Monty Python quote, but I should have possibly saved it to British Mark Jenkins Bait. For this is definitely a feature film out of the ordinary.
However, the action itself is conventional enough. Bait takes place in a small fishing village in Cornwall, where the coexistence between locals and tourists is not harmoniously pronounced. "He's so snobbish that at first I thought he spoke German," says the young girl who works at the local pub about one of the holidaymakers.
The film's most central character is the fisherman Martin, who strives to save money to acquire a new fishing boat (not least because the lack of a boat makes the most lucrative catch difficult), while the brother uses their boat to take tourists on sightseeing.
The brothers have had to sell the childhood home to a family from London who uses it as a cottage, and who has furnished it with "authentic" maritime ornaments which in Martin's eyes make it reminiscent of a sex cellar. His son is being trained in the fishing industry, but at the same time is being attracted to an aging holiday girl – and with that, the conflict will gradually escalate.
Old fashioned process
Bait is primarily different because of its deliberately distorted aesthetics and unorthodox use of the film language's tools. The film is shot in grainy 16-inch black and white film with a retractable 70s Bolex camera, and Jenkin has himself developed the film with a method that makes it appear as a collection of worn and scratched archive rolls.
The dialogue sound is obviously recorded afterwards, as was done in Italian films in the 60s and 70s, and the scenes often lack background sounds that would realistically be heard – for example, buzzing talk from other guests in the bar scenes. The director, who has also photographed the film himself, often makes use of denser close-ups than we are used to in both films and TV series, which are currently also being made to appear on relatively large screens.
In form as well as content, Bait is a distinctly nostalgic film.
Several of these grips provide Bait a somewhat clumsy and amateurish expression, but the intention is rather to create an aesthetic reminiscent of films made long before digital recording equipment and other modern features. In addition, it seems that Jenkin has wanted to make the cinematic means visible, almost like a form of Verfremdungseffekt.
Unrealistic Social Realism
Although Bait in other words, it must be natural to see it in the context of other films, preferably from movie history. From recent films, it can lead the mind of the maritime lighthouse keeper The Lighthouse, which is also filmed in black and white with an old-fashioned image format. But where Robert Eggers' movie is a kind of surreal horror movie, is Bait a social-realistic drama portrayed in a strikingly small social-realist way. Or as The Guardians Peter Bradshaw so aptly described it in his review of the film: as an episode of the British soap opera EastEnders directed by the expressionist German silent film director FW Murnau.
Director Mark Jenkin
Storbritannia
One of the film's most distinctive features is its cutting style. This feature is also performed by Jenkin himself, who is credited as a director, screenwriter, photographer and editor. Often he cuts shorter pictures from subsequent scenes, which thus act as (often disturbingly) a pointer to what's going to happen. Admittedly, it is not uncommon in recent films to cut images from the next scene as a form of transition, but in Bait this cut is done in a much more abrupt and expressionist way.
The shape is very similar to that of Sergei Eistenstein's Russian films from the 20th century, of which The armored cruiser Potemkin is the most famous. Eistenstein's groundbreaking montage sequences contrasted various images and courses of action with great dramatic effect, as well as creating an abstract and ideological interpretive space for the spectator. But one can also believe that Jean-Luc Godard and other filmmakers from the French new wave of the 50s and 60s have been a source of inspiration for Jenkin.
The authentic experience
However, thematic has Bait great relevance to our time. A number of countries have gradually become tourism as the main industry, and small coastal communities are often among the most popular resorts. The film points out some of the paradoxes of our quest for the real and authentic, with holidaying big-city people who want to spend time in villages that have traditionally been based on primary industries – while not wanting to be awakened from the holiday sleep of fishermen heading out to sea at dawn . We don't really want to be tourists, but we would like to go on vacation. We want to experience something genuine, but there are limits to how genuine it should be.
Director Mark Jenkin
Storbritannia
The sum of these items does Bait both timeless and current. The film is to be praised for its attempt to develop a unique design language, while at the same time clarifying its indebtedness to the many innovations and experiments of film history. In form as well as content it is a distinct one nostalgic film, which should probably also be seen in the context of the filmmaker himself being from Cornwall. He takes a far-reaching local perspective on the conflict portrayed, with a tangible love for the endangered lifestyle there – without necessarily condemning the travelers.
It is challenging to judge the quality of a movie that at times seems "unprofessional" and awkward in its performance, but Bait is undeniably an interesting and very interesting movie. Not least, it is characterized by a refreshing playfulness, which makes it never feel pretentious. Instead, it is tempting to say that Bait in all its intentional artificiality is exemplary authentic.
Bait is the Movie of the Month on Cinemateket in Oslo in June and also appear at the cinemas in Bergen, Trondheim, Stavanger, Tromsø and Lillehammer. The Cinemateket in Kristiansand sets it up when they open again in August.
