‘Harvest’ Review: Transplanting English to Scottish Locales Does No Favors for Athina Rachel Tsangari’s Adapted Historical Tale | Venice

Two names come to mind on mention of filmmakers who found their feet in the Greek New Wave Cinema movement; Yorgos Lanthimos and Athina Rachel Tsangari. Though both have forged fascinating careers for themselves individually, their combined strength as a director and producer duo has resulted in the films Kinetta, Dogtooth and Alps. After nine years of not directing, Tsangari has premiered her debut English-language feature Harvest in competition at the Venice Film Festival. 

When we are first introduced to Walter Thirsk (Caleb Landry Jones), a slightly doltish but kind-hearted villager residing in an ultra-rural area of Scotland, he appears in his element, solemnly roaming the gorgeous scenery. The serenity of his solo stroll is interrupted upon return to his unnamed village as he finds their stable engulfed in flames and fellow villagers flailing in trepidation. The chaos is extinguished by the arrival of Master Kent (Harry Melling), the village’s lord of the manor, whose primed and proper demeanour contrasts that of the rest of the minuscule population. Apart from being childhood friends, he and Walter are the only two inhabitants who have married into the community rather than being born in it. Now both widowers, their welcome in the village seems to be slipping away. 

Before any thorough investigation can take place to deduce who the arsonist may be, three strangers are found nearby and are blamed. The two men are chained to a pillory while the woman is allowed to flee, but not before her long locks are sheared off as punishment. The villagers commence their annual harvest and the traditions that accompany it, including a lavish feast. For the first time, their rituals have an outside witness in Phillip Earle, a cartographer hired by Master Earle to draw up a map of their village and surrounding land. Unsurprisingly, Walter is the only person to take kindly to Earle’s arrival, even sharing his in-depth knowledge of botany with him. Wandering through the beautiful landscape, Earle warns Walter of the truth behind his presence. As Master Kent has no blood tie to his deceased wife’s land and her cousin Edmund Jordan’s arrival to claim it is imminent. From there on the village’s downfall begins and fails to cease until nothing is left. 

The film is based on the 2013 book of the same name by Jim Crace and feels like a story better to be studied by high school English classes, rather than one to be watched on the big screen. The screenplay sets the events in Scotland rather than England for unidentifiable reasons. Not only does this interfere historically with the complicated mapping of the highland region, but also on a level of performance, requiring more demanding accents and vernacular. It also changes the ethnicities of the three outsiders who are detained by the villagers who switch between speaking Portuguese and having thick Scottish accents from multiple different regions. They claim to be from a neighbouring village, but why they settled there is never defined. The same goes for Earle, who is made into a scapegoat when things in the village begin going wrong. The villager’s fear of outsiders does not require these changes and would have been thematically stronger without the employment of watered-down racial politics.

At times it feels as though Caleb Landry Jones lacks the tenderness needed to be Walter, the beating heart of this story. It’s difficult to shake the feeling that perhaps Jones and Harry Melling, who has had a fascinating career since appearing in the Harry Potter franchise at a young age, should have played each other’s roles. Melling naturally possesses the ability to be endearing and slightly sensitive in a way that feels forced and therefore distracting from Jones. 

The true strength of Harvest is the film’s succulent 16mm cinematography, crafted by Sean Price Williams, who recently made his directorial debut with The Sweet East, but is known best for his work as a director of photography having shot films such as Good Time and “Her Smell”. His work encapsulates the beauty of the natural world and considerably contributes to the rustic aesthetic of this pastoral tale routed in the Middle Ages. Other creative decisions made can be baffling at times. Peculiar leather animal masks and the odd use of neon lighting makes the commune feel more like a cult than a united group whose ousting we should feel empathy for. 

Perhaps Harvest would have been more suited to a limited series format, one which could offer room for the fleshing-out of characters and building of suspense as revelations are uncovered. As a film, it feels long-winded to sit through at times, especially when it fails to justify liberties taken from the book’s original narrative.

Grade: C+

This review is from the 2024 Venice Film Festival where Harvest world premiered in competition. MUBI will release the film theatrically in the U.S.