Rose of Nevada

 

Director Mark Jenkin

director on the set

primary cast

ROSE OF NEVADA             B                                                                                                Great Britain  (114 mi)  2025  d: Mark Jenkin

Guilt’s hard shadow to live under.                                                                                                 —Mr. Richards (Adrian Rawlins)

One would have to surmise that living in a fishing community would lend itself to hearing every manner of exaggerated tall tales when it comes to sea chanties, ship wrecks, or embellished fishing stories, but this one is a doozy, as it incorporates time travel, building a story around a supernatural mystery, venturing into the territory of Shane Carruth’s PRIMER (2004), yet actualized cinematically in a decidedly different manner, as this is more of a sensory experience, where the introspective aspect both invites and resists interpretation.  The concluding segment of the director’s Cornish Trilogy, which began with BAIT (2019), an experimental, Brexit-era drama about the corrosive effect of tourism on coastal towns, rooted in the local Cornish culture and community of the southwestern United Kingdom that shows how marginalized places are facing up to a changing world, followed by Enys Men (2022), a metaphysical horror tale that plunges us into a fractured reality that explores the psychological depths of loneliness from extreme isolation.  Both films question the nature of identity, as people somehow feel unmoored by the challenges presented in their current circumstances, as if they’ve drifted into another dimension, where this film literally takes us there, with a droning opening musical track that sets the mood with its endlessly echoing reverberation, Kneebone Barton YouTube (5:20).  Mark Jenkin is not for everyone, as his artistic aesthetic is exclusively his own, shooting on a 50-year-old Bolex H-16 16mm camera, which has a maximum of 27 seconds of uninterrupted footage before it needs rewinding, using no live sound recording, as it’s all post synchronized later in a studio, where Jenkin writes, directs, shoots, edits, designs the sound, and composes the musical score, so his imprint is all over this film, made with a £1.3 million funding contribution from the British Film Institute.  Set in a nearly abandoned fishing village in Cornwall, a ruggedly beautiful coastal region, where thirty years ago the loss of the fishing vessel Rose of Nevada along with its crew devastated the once thriving community, which has never recovered, left in economic decline, with local businesses boarded up, houses in a state of decay, while many of its residents have moved elsewhere.  Yet one day, the ship magically reappears in the harbor, tied to the dock, sitting there all alone, with no explanation how it got there.  Shocked at the sight of it, former owner and town businessman Mike (Edward Rowe) decides to clean it up, find a crew, and send it out again, with Captain Murgey (Francis Magee, a former fisherman from the Isle of Man) suddenly appearing on the wharf as a skipper for hire, which sets the action in motion.  It’s important to remember that the 1980’s and 90’s were defining, highly emotional decades for Cornwall’s working class, marked by intense political, economic, and cultural discussions surrounding the collapse of its traditional fishing and mining industries, leading to economic deprivation.  Having grown up there, the director’s familiarity with Cornish history is unmistakable, with this film rooted in the bleak political realities of 2020’s Britain.

Hypnotic and fascinating, this is an uncommonly unique way to explore an economic crisis rooted in history, while at the same time examining the difficulties involved in the struggle to find one’s place in a changing world.  Early on the film centers around Nick (George MacKay, from Bertrand Bonello’s 2024 Top Ten List #9 The Beast (La Bête), who represents the desire to offer a better future to his family, his wife Emily (Mae Voogd), and their daughter, as he attempts to fix a hole in the roof where the rain leaks in, but only makes things worse, actually falling through the roof, while next door, the ghostly figure of a senile Mrs. Richards (Mary Woodvine, the director’s partner and story collaborator) stands outside in the rain, confusing Nick with her son Luke who was lost tragically, speaking gloomily, as if in prophecy, like one of the witches in Shakespeare’s Macbeth.  Helped inside by Emily, Mr. Richards (Adrian Rawlins) is off paying tribute to the cliffside overlook peering out at the sea, still grieving over the loss of their son Luke, who jumped to his death from the overwhelming pressure of guilt over what happened to those original fisherman, blaming himself, as his absence left them one crew member short.  Tina (Rosalind Eleazar) is the black girlfriend of one of the men lost at sea, who is left to raise their child alone.  This is not the first case of mistaken identity, as it recurs throughout the film, but it serves as an ominous foreshadowing.  Like all of Jenkin’s films, this is a meditation on time and memory, missed opportunities, and sparsely populated communities that appear doomed to repeat the same mistakes, yet filled with ambiguity, which forces viewers to more closely examine the small, often-overlooked details.  With wider distribution than his earlier work, this film is every bit as peculiar, expressing an offbeat formalism, where Jenkin allows the film to get damaged, scratched, and even overexposed, yet the colors are extremely vivid, as he’s going for an aged look of what films used to look like before the transition to a more washed-out dreariness from digital video.  Without the cash to pay for the roof, Nick volunteers to be one of the members of the crew, leaving his wife and child behind for what is expected to be just a few days, Rose of Nevada (2026) | "See Ya" Ominous Clip YouTube (1:13), joined shortly afterwards by Liam (Callum Turner), a transitory worker sleeping on the docks with no family and no home, seemingly without a past, remaining something of an enigma for Nick, Rose of Nevada | Official clip | Now streaming on BFI Player YouTube (2:02).  There’s also a warning carved into the wood in the bunkroom on the boat that reads, ominously, “Get off the Boat now,” which suggests he may have been on this same journey before.  And so The Odyssey begins, only in this version, the sailor Odysseus can never return home to Penelope.  While the everpresent sea represents a conscious place, it’s also a vehicle for the unconscious to surface once the boat hits the shore, where the town becomes a time portal that plays havoc with the characters.   

Once at sea, it’s an immersive, labor-intensive experience with an exquisite sound design, where the mechanical sounds of hydraulic machinery to release and haul-in the trawling nets is balanced against the cry of gulls floating overhead, with stomping sounds heard in the background, like a mind-numbing metronome, which only accentuates the exhausting physical labor involved, yet all goes well, returning back with a full load of fish, but something’s not right when they return, as the town is thriving and filled with life, simply teeming with people and activity, not the desolate outpost they left, yet buried tensions rise to the surface and the community itself begins to feel restlessly adrift, as if existing out of time.  The fishing trade is the lifeblood of the community, where people come down in droves to help them unload their cargo, hauling off the fish before making the rounds at the town pub, which is absolutely packed with people, as the entire town has been completely re-invigorated.  The first thing Nick realizes is that his family is not where he left them, having simply disappeared, finding himself trapped in an existential nightmare, leaving him bewildered and horrified, with a much younger Mr. and Mrs. Richards mistaking him for their son Luke, and Liam for Alan, the two local boys lost at sea thirty years earlier, having gone back in time to 1993, where everyone welcomes them back home as if nothing has happened.  There are no sci-fi signs of this time difference, of course, and no one to explain what’s happened, though David Cronenberg’s THE DEAD ZONE (1983) is featured prominently in one scene, as we only see the confusion in Nick’s eyes, where Liam simply assumes the role of Alan, picking up with his girlfriend Tina, as if that’s who he’s been with all along, ROSE OF NEVADA | Official Clip #1 YouTube (1:25).  The two men have essentially switched roles, as Nick now has no one, just like Liam did initially, while Liam is happy to have gained a new home and family that isn’t really his, but he likes having a sense of belonging, even if it’s a little creepy that he once flirted with Tina’s adult daughter Jess (Yana Penrose) in a different time period.  Meanwhile, Nick is disenchanted with his new family, remaining emotionally distant and aloof, profoundly missing his real family, who only appear to him in dreams, ROSE OF NEVADA | Official Clip # 3 YouTube (40 seconds).  Murgey doesn’t seem to notice, or care, as he just stays on the boat.  Embraced by this new community, who come together to weave a new net, as the other one was lost in a storm, Nick keeps searching for the family he has seemingly lost, so he keeps getting back onto the boat, hoping at some point he will return to his life in the present, ROSE OF NEVADA | Exclusive Clip | A Film by Mark Jenkin YouTube (1:11).  Stuck in an endless time-loop, warned never to allow themselves to go out undermanned, as that would spell their doom, the time traveling aspect is the glue that holds this together, as it’s a horror film of psychological disorientation, affecting each of these men differently, having assumed lives that are not their own, yet it’s what fate has handed them.  Essentially constructing the film around something that does not belong, Emily delivers the mystifying final line, “There is no time,” in an eerie, hallucinatory vision that finally merges the past with the present, where the emotional consequences of the time jump become painfully clear.

Silent Friend (Stille Freundin)

 

Director Ildikó Enyedi

director on the set

Director with Tony Leung

Director with Léa Seydoux

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

SILENT FRIEND (Stille Freundin)               B+                                                               Hungary  Germany  France  China  (147 mi)  2025  d: Ildikó Enyedi

What would you do if you wanted to connect with a being but had no common language?           —Dr. Tony Wong (Tony Leung)

With no explanation or advance warning, viewers won’t have a clue what this film is about, as it’s a collision of science and neurobiology studying the communication of plants, which is a whole new world of exploration, like outer space or deep sea underwater, and not one that makes a whole lot of sense to most of us, as it’s simply unexplored territory.  To do this cinematically, without a whole lot of scientific detail or explanation, defies the odds, but what really stands out is the superb choice in casting, as these are actors who convey so much meaning on their faces without uttering a word, allowing viewers to draw their own conclusions without a director imposing their own commentary.  It may come as some surprise that Hungarian filmmaker Ildikó Enyedi, maker of the Berlin Golden Bear 1st Prize winning film On Body and Soul (Teströl és lélekröl) (2017), is in her 70’s, which may explain the rather philosophic and contemplative outlook here, with both films balancing between reality and dreams, between body and mind, without ever getting lost in mere mood, combining a poetic visual language with philosophical themes around people and nature. Attempting to understand an inter-connection of all living things, unraveling in an unhurried pace, this is told in a triptych spanning over a century, with each segment set in a different time period, united by a centuries-old Ginkgo biloba tree, one of the oldest tree species on Earth that can live more than 3000 years, originating in the mountains of China, where they were saved from extinction by Buddhist and Taoist monks planting them near their monasteries, viewed as a “living fossil” that has remained virtually unchanged for over 290 million years, outliving the dinosaurs as the sole survivor of an entire ancient plant lineage, standing in a botanic garden at the Alter Botanischer Garten Marburg, a historic arboretum and botanical garden maintained by the University of Marburg in Germany, one of the oldest universities in the world.  As the central figure of the film, standing in all its glory, some 50 to 80 feet high, the film has a way of observing those who pass by, observe, and study this tree, becoming a very quiet and meditative film that may have limited appeal.  But for those who can appreciate such a radical approach, this is a minimally plotted film that reaches out to all the senses, asking us to reconsider the plant life and natural world all around us, filled with so much we still don’t understand, perhaps filled with a consciousness not too dissimilar from our own, embedded with secrets that lend itself to further study.  What gets scrutinized here is how the life of a tree and the life of an academic institution change over time, adding new layers that weren’t there before, both becoming living and breathing lifeforms.  The way the film is shot, however, gives the school a very modern look, where this is a juxtaposition of old and new, becoming something of a visual bonanza, with equal parts academic and the purely sensorial, beautifully shot on different film mediums by Gergely Pálos, who also shot Roy Andersson’s abstractly surreal About Endlessness (Om det oändliga) (2019), using 35mm black and white in the 1908 period, 16mm in the 1972 period, and digitally for 2020, including extensive use of time-lapse photography, where some shots are even filmed from the tree’s perspective.  Interestingly, without any fanfare, all the women in the film are primarily seen as pioneers, however, rather than promote feminism, this never gets bogged down into a message film, but instead becomes more of an instructive art piece that helps us appreciate the natural world around us, which may transcend all political ideologies or societal conflicts, becoming a serene experience with our “silent friends.”      

In a collaborative production involving Germany, France, Hungary, and China, the film opens through the pensive eyes of Dr. Tony Wong (Hong Kong cinema legend Tony Leung, long associated with Wong Kar-wai, making a rare appearance in a Western film in a role written specially for him), an esteemed neurologist from Hong Kong who arrives at the German university as a visiting professor, who studies how infant brains function and how they absorb information, seen studying the brain wave patterns of newborns as he provides stimulation from puppets, which he describes as lantern-like consciousness, or moving through the different stimuli, and then comparing that to how adults see the world around us, which he refers to as spotlight (or single point) consciousness.  Colorful images are projected onto his computer while an electronic soundtrack by Hungarian composers Gábor Keresztes and Kristóf Kelemen weaves a musical interlude connecting him to the world around him, from the plentiful students wandering the canvas grounds to the world of giant trees filling the gardens, only to be stranded there when COVID hits in 2020, unable to continue his work, suddenly seen wearing a mask, so his interest turns to the natural world around him, taking regular visits to the garden grounds, becoming fascinated by an old ginkgo tree that was planted in 1832.  What follows is an ultra-crisp black and white sequence at that same German university, taking us back to 1908 as botany student Grete (Luna Wedler) is being interviewed by an all-male panel of professors to become the university’s first female student almost 400 years after the university was founded, skillfully providing detailed answers, yet unspoken prejudices hang heavily in the air and color every question, as the professors get a big kick out of trying to humiliate her and make her uncomfortable with sexual language, especially when they compare a flower’s petals to “the bridal bed” and ask her to evaluate 20 men in the same bed with a single woman, wondering what she thinks of that, where she quickly retorts that they’re speaking of plants, not humans, which sharply cuts through the crap.  Her quick-wittedness and scientific expertise impresses the professors, yet sexism and misogyny make clear just how hostile academia is to her.  Nonetheless, as the lone female in a school filled with probing male eyes, she is viewed differently, paying more attention to her behavior and the way she speaks, and formally dresses, than what she has to say, which is routinely ignored, as none view her as a scientific scholar in the making.  Moving to 1972, Hannes (Enzo Brumm, in his first major role) is a naïve, working class, young literature student who hopes to study poetry, evoking Goethe and Rilke, displaying a certain small-town awkwardness in the presence of more free-spirited, counterculture student protests and casual drug use, where he comes in contact with his housemate, Gundula (Marlene Burow), a liberated and confident botanist who is studying plant life, experimenting with plant consciousness by wiring up a geranium in her room, with a machine registering the changing sensor readings, much like a lie detector test, a hypothesis that Dr. Wong will expand upon decades later.  The film may be criticized for anthropomorphizing plants, imbuing them with human characteristics, where unless you’re an expert in this field, it’s hard to imagine that plants are as sentient as humans, yet we also send out space probe searches for signals and signs of life, which is precisely the point, as these sequences are cleverly weaved together through the power of imagining, where it’s the silences that stand out, as viewers read the subtle facial expressions of the protagonists, where so much is left unspoken and undefined.  While it veers towards experimental cinema, it’s a surprisingly humane film that features some outstanding performances.

Listed at #36 from the Sight & Sound list of the best films of the year, inspired by the works of German photographer Karl Blossfeldt, with a little soul-searching from German forester Peter Wohlleben and pioneering Italian ecologist Monica Gagliano thrown in as well, the film premiered at the Venice Film Festival in September 2025 where it was described as “the tree movie,” winning the Fipresci Prize, while Luna Wedler won the Best Young Actress Award.  After the university interview, Grete takes refuge in the serene calmness of the ginkgo tree, which has an identifying label, Ginkgo biloba, 1832, followed by an early morning meeting of Grete with other women under that same ginkgo tree, all changing into loosely fitting white outfits that resemble Greek goddesses, as they collectively do what resembles a Dionysian dance of the Furies in harmony with nature (Luna Wedler studied contemporary dance for two years), mannered in the neoclassicism of Isadora Duncan, Isadora Duncan (1877-1927). Equally impressive is a sequence of shots revealing the emptiness of the school hallways, and staircases, which resemble modern geometric shapes, or the cafeteria, with its giant windows looking outdoors over the rooftops at the surrounding trees, with Dr. Wong often seen sitting alone, where the vantage point shifts from him peering out to looking back in through his reflection off those massive windows, while we also see him in his sterile room where he lives alone.  We learn Hannes, who harbors a secret crush on his roommate, lives upstairs in an attic apartment in the same home as Gundula, who lives downstairs, but it features a transcendent moment of Hannes sitting alone listening to the music of Wagner, Lohengrin, Act I: Prelude YouTube (9:51), while Gundula sits in a window below smoking a cigarette, where the sound permeates through the house, attached gardens, and surrounding woods, offering a memorable yet haunting sensory moment.  Wong and Greta are also connected by images of them both standing under the same tree one hundred years apart, where it has grown massively, Silent Friend new clip official from Venice Film Festival 2025 - 1/2 YouTube (1:11).  Similarly, Hannes and Grete are connecting by a stone water fountain with water spurting out of a lion’s mouth, exquisitely merging the past and the present, Silent Friend new clip official from Venice Film Festival 2025 - 2/2 YouTube (1:37).  These sequences are balanced with outdoor nature shots of the substantial garden grounds outside the university, where the ginkgo tree becomes a primary subject in different shades of light, with a prominent sound design of birds chirping and bugs buzzing, and what resembles cosmic interludes between the sequences, with recurring, surreal images of the movement of tree roots, in all their entangled complexity, which resemble brain synapses, like a sentient being, where the stunning look of the film won a best cinematography award at the Chicago Film Festival 2025.  Besides the commonality of the ginkgo tree, what stands out in this film is how humans fail to adequately express themselves and communicate with one another, and while each protagonist is a scientist, in their own way they all have a vested interest in understanding the nature of plant life, making this a subversive sensory experience about the joy of thinking and feeling, with suggestions that communication exists in many forms, far beyond the limits of human language.  As much as we try to socialize and remain connected to others, sometimes what we most identify with is the expressive quality of the natural world, where the mammoth size of some trees dwarf their human counterparts.     

There are equally striking inharmonious sequences, like the scene of Grete getting scolded for what is presumed to be scandalous behavior by her stern, rooming house mother, as she returned home with wet clothing, which she immediately infers comes from promiscuous activity, throwing her out on the spot, no questions asked, sending her off into the street, which ultimately leads her to the storefront photography studio of Herr Fuchs (Martin Wuttke), an elderly man who is offering a position as a photographer’s assistant in exchange for room and board, quickly adapting to this new profession, taking pictures that merge art, science, and the human anatomy, using photography to uncover universal patterns in plants, inspired by British botanist/photographer Anna Atkins.  Dr. Wong also has video chats with a fellow colleague isolated by the pandemic, French botanist Dr. Alice Sauvage (Léa Seydoux), who essentially asks, “What if plants perceive us in the same way that we perceive them?”  The film doesn’t try to provide answers, instead showing that there might be things in life that we are not yet aware of, where we remain blind to the possibilities.  She’s interested in how plants commune and reproduce, and only appears on phone or computer screens, with Wong quickly adapting a new research study trying to match his own neurological patterns with the ginkgo’s activity by attaching an improvised brain scanner on it, suspecting a deep relationship, veering towards a psychedelic experience, between what is seen and unseen.  However, Anton (Sylvestor Groth), the university’s janitor and only other person remaining on campus, appears to be troubled by the research, finding Wong’s Asian or foreign presence equally distressing, and destroys the equipment.  Since there’s no one else on the grounds it’s not hard to figure out who’s responsible, but after utilizing his phone’s language translation tool and explaining what he’s up to, they actually end up working together harmoniously.  There’s a striking song that plays near the end to a sole image of the ginkgo tree in full autumnal colors, shot in a slow backwards zoom that reveals the magnificence of the entire tree, sung by the German industrial band Einstürzende Neubauten, featuring Blixa Bargeld, Blixa Bargeld - Ein Gleiches (Goethe Interpretation) YouTube (3:37), composed specifically for the film on a lyric by Goethe.  Though easily the most original musical selection is the use of a song by Guatemalan singer Gaby Moreno, Gaby Moreno - Til Waking Light YouTube (4:47), accentuating her powerhouse vocal range, moving from tender whispers to a soaring intensity, which is used twice, once during a scientific breakthrough mixed with moving electronic colors and again over the end credits.  The electronic imagery associated with plants recalls the final imagery of Wim Wenders’ Until the End of the World (Bis ans Ende der Welt) (1991) where brainwaves are transformed into a kaleidoscope of intersecting forms and shapes and colors.  What’s also impressive is the long list of plant species used in the film, which are all listed in the final credit sequence, a much longer list than the credited human actors.  The first hour or so is simply brilliant, masterfully directed, beautifully edited together by Károly Szalai, blending together abstract imagery, moving effortlessly between the time frames, where you never know what to expect, expressing a new world of discovery, but it does become more predictable and drags a bit by the end of a two and a half hour movie, but it’s still an unforgettable experience.  Dedicated to German producer Karl Baumgarten, affectionately known as Baumi, who was a leading European distributor of international arthouse films, founder of Pandora Film and The Match Factory, who began developing the project with Enyedi until he died in 2014, revived a decade later, drawing from European public money to finally come to fruition.

Silent Friend {Stille Freundin} Sylvester Groth-Enzo Brumm ... Entire film online with English subtitles, YouTube (2:27:04)