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.

A Big Bold Beautiful Journey

 

Director Kogonada

Kogonada with Colin Ferrell

Kogonada and Ferrell with Margot Robbie

A BIG BOLD BEAUTIFUL JOURNEY                 B+                                                      Ireland  USA  (108 mi)  2025  d: Kogonada

This is the first day of my life
Swear I was born right in the doorway
I went out in the rain, suddenly everything changed
They’re spreading blankets on the beach

Yours was the first face that I saw
I think I was blind before I met you
And I don’t know where I am, I don’t know where I’ve been
But I know where I want to go

Bright Eyes, First Day of My Life, 2005, Bright Eyes - First Day of My Life [Official Music Video] YouTube (3:06)

The most hilariously playful of the essayist-turned-filmmaker Kogonada films, which would include the ravishingly beautiful naturalism of 2017 Top Ten List #5 Columbus and the sci-fi world of artificial intelligence in After Yang (2021), where the tagline of this film is:  What if you could open a doorway and walk through it to re-live a defining moment from your past?  While the release has been postponed several times, the first film Kogonada neither wrote nor edited, it has taken an avalanche of negative criticism, with some suggesting it’s among the worst films of the year, even described as a bomb, yet this is nothing as they describe, instead it’s actually a weirdly fascinating, fun experience, clever and insightful, absurdist in its own way, where it takes us down a rabbit hole, much like Jacques Rivette’s Céline and Julie Go Boating (Céline et Julie vont en bateau) (1974), while it also recalls the romantic time traveling escapades of Bertrand Bonello’s 2024 Top Ten List #9 The Beast (La Bête), Charlie Kaufman’s I'm Thinking of Ending Things (2020), or Robert Schwentke’s The Time Traveler's Wife (2009), while also reminiscent of the quirky romantic journey of Marc Webb’s (500) Days of Summer (2009), a throwback to the whimsical comedy of Zach Braff’s GARDEN STATE (2004), or even the disoriented editing structure of Charlie Kaufmann and Michel Gondry’s ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND (2004).  In other words, despite what disparaging critics have suggested, this is not a waste of time, but a bonanza of riches, a romantic fantasy filled with moments of joy, but also major disappointments, as it excruciatingly examines the flawed lives of two people who are single, filled with regrets, missed opportunities, and the trauma of bad relationships, which is part of the baggage we all carry and what makes us who we are, magically making them come together through a kind of ingeniously clever, futuristic matchmaking service, where there’s a humanizing beauty to be had in their shared moments together.  Korean-American filmmaker Kogonada’s birth name is Park Joong Eun, where his professional name was derived from renowned Japanese auteur Yasujirō Ozu’s longtime screenwriter Kogo Noda, and what we know is that he’s developed a reputation for the unconventional.  Perhaps the biggest surprise is the film’s musical score is written by Joe Hisaishi, who is best known for his collaborations with Studio Ghibli Japanese anime director Hayao Miyazaki, the maker of such enchanting films like MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO (1988), PRINCESS MONONOKE (1997), SPIRITED AWAY (2001), HOWL’S MOVING CASTLE (2004), and more recently The Wind Rises (Kaze Tachinu) (2014) and The Boy and the Heron (Kimitachi wa dô ikiru ka) (2023), where this marks the celebrated composer's first score outside of Japan, adding a touch of magic to the experience.  There’s nothing quite like this in any of the year’s movie releases, where the uniqueness of the subject matter, beautifully realized by screenwriter Seth Reiss, a former head writer for the irreverent, satirical publication The Onion and on the staff of Late Night with Seth Meyers, becomes a cause for celebration.  While deeply felt and understated, this may not be as intellectually challenging as the filmmaker’s earlier work, but it is lighter and infinitely more entertaining, revealing a side we haven’t really seen before, literally swooning with romanticism, where these big name Hollywood actors are an absolute delight in something less mainstream and more offbeat, and while the protagonist’s problems aren’t exactly so earthshaking that it requires divine intervention, like George Bailey in Frank Capra’s IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE (1946), the solution does appear to be driven by the transformative power of love. 

Carrying over the married couple actors from his previous film, including the artistically stunning, visually dazzling cinematography by Benjamin Loeb, employing a vivid color palette, while adding a few new surprises, the unusually versatile Colin Ferrell stars as David, a single man with a perpetually lonely soul, yet he’s completely relatable as someone we might have known, smart, imaginative, yet not exactly socially engaging, typically keeping to himself, where he doesn’t easily make connections.  When his car is booted for parking issues, in desperation he turns to a rental car agency specializing in emergencies since 1994, whose homemade flyer advertisement is seen posted on a wall directly in front of his car, including a phone number and a mysterious broken heart.  Arriving in this immense warehouse that is completely dark except for an illuminated card table on the far side, like a football field away, where two people sit under a giant sign that says The Rental Car Agency – none other than Kevin Kline (you have to do a double take to realize that’s him) and a German-accented Phoebe Waller-Bridge who relishes the use of the word “fuck,” whose surreal personalities are oddly eccentric, characters you might find in a Monty Python movie, not at all what he expects, as it plays out like an audition, where they already have a professional headshot photo of him, a picture David has never seen before, informing him “Sometimes we have to perform to get to the truth,” so none of this makes sense.  He’s also a bit surprised that the only cars offered are two identical 1994 Saturn SL’s, which are no longer in operation, yet there they are, and while he’s flummoxed by the bizarre way the car agent’s communicate, almost like robotic AI versions of themselves, insisting there’s only one right answer to all his inquiries, nonetheless he’s persuaded to purchase the accompanying GPS, which the car didn’t originally have in the pre-internet era, with no outlets for a phone, complete with an animated screen.  As it turns out, that GPS is a major character in the film, seemingly omniscient and all-knowing, with a cryptic voice offering advice that goes well beyond navigational directions, voiced by Jodie Turner-Smith, with David seen in the car on the road happily belting out one of the songs from the musical A Chorus Line while he drives to a wedding, A Chorus Line (1985) - One Scene (8/8) | Movieclips YouTube (4:09), not the norm, for sure, yet it exudes pizzazz from the hidden regions of his less than dynamic personality.  Upon arrival at the wedding in the pouring rain, taking place in a hotel called La Strada (after the Fellini film), all the guests are handed Jacques Demy The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (Les Parapluies de Cherbourg) umbrellas for an outdoor service (just a few of the many cinematic cues referenced), where David looks across the aisle to see a woman looking back at him, Margot Robbie as Sarah, where the pair briefly engages in conversation afterwards.  He’s more reserved and shy, quietly haunted by regrets and unresolved relationships, while she’s more of a free spirit, where her cheerful exterior hides the vulnerability and deep turmoil within, as both are unhappily single, where neither is the person they would like to be, but they are so emotionally guarded that they’d rather ignore any obvious attraction to avoid the risk of getting hurt, so the encounter ends awkwardly, seemingly built on self-deprecating declarations, but nothing becomes of it before going their separate ways.  Instead, on the road afterwards, the GPS informs him of an upcoming spot to stop for a fast food burger.  Incredulously, Sarah is there as well, coming over to share a table with David, where they realize each is driving the exact same vintage Saturn, quickly assessing that this is more than mere coincidence.  Confessing a few personal secrets about themselves, their fears, their insecurities, and their fear of commitment, discovering both have been disappointed in relationships, they decide to continue the journey together, but only after Sarah’s car fails to start, so they really have no other choice, turning into a road trip that is partly a journey down memory lane and partly a spiritual awakening.   

Literally thrown in each other’s laps, it all seems designed by a higher power, embarking on a fantastical, magical mystery tour together, where the GPS leads them to a series of mysterious doors in the middle of nowhere as open portals to another dimension that allows them to revisit key moments of their past, like a lighthouse in Canada that may or may not have led to a personal epiphany for David, or an art museum that Sarah used to visit with her equally free spirited mother, developing a trusting relationship with the guard who let them in after hours when the museum is completely dark, so these are memorable places, holding a very special significance in their lives, perhaps the source of their negative views of themselves.  They connect on an existential level, both very self-aware, digging into who they are and how they got to be that way, happier alone than in the company of others, yet that is equally frustrating, challenged by their own unique limitations, as a dark cloud seems to hover over each of them, stymied by an inability to connect with others, yet visiting these doors is a bit like dating, as the accumulation of knowledge and the discovery of new possibilities is essential.  When another door leads to David’s high school, seeing him as a teenager while viewers see him as an adult, the film explodes into a full-blown musical, as David has the role of J. Pierrepont Finch in the Pulitzer prize-winning musical How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, suddenly finding himself performing onstage just after the girl of his dreams rejects him, breaking out into a song and dance, with Sarah, who is a musical junkie, howling with delight in the audience, A BIG BOLD BEAUTIFUL JOURNEY – Exclusive 6 Minute Scene YouTube (6:24).  It all feels cathartic, like this has a chance to change their future in some mysterious way, but neither one seems able to find that key, still locked in the past with no way out, where there’s a beautiful balance between cynicism and hope, as each one gets stuck in their own personal trauma, trying to reach out, but get blocked by their preconceptions, which has a way of bulldozing their hopes and dreams.  The filmmaker has a blast just visualizing this succession of doors, like one of their destinations where Sarah and David climb a hill that incredulously offers them a view of Earth from space.  With each passing door comes new revelations about a crucial event in each other’s lives that provides greater understanding into their character.  There’s an Alice in Wonderland innocence and naïveté about this, as these kinds of literary efforts are usually young people or teenagers passing through a phase into adulthood, but these are adults reverting back to their childhoods, seemingly rewiring the circuitry, but neither one is brave enough to reach out to the other, as they seem to need an extra boost to appreciate their own lives.  Perhaps the most therapeutic sequences are surreal and intoxicating moments where David is transported back to a hospital in Ireland on the day he was born where he’s anonymously able to encourage his own reticent father as a younger man (Hamish Linklater), while Sarah visits her ailing mother (Lily Rabe, daughter of actress Jill Clayburgh - - cool how the parents are partners in real life) in the hospital on the day she dies of cancer, a woman who sacrificed everything to give her daughter a good life, finally sharing that poignant moment together that they were never able to actually experience, offering some kind of corrective.  There’s a weirdly amusing, phantasmagorical nature to the entire experience, beautifully rendered, with just a touch of the right serious note, but as soon as we hear the sounds of Bright Eyes - First Day of My Life [Official Music Video] YouTube (3:06), we know we’re immersed in a whimsical theatrical journey brimming with optimism, given that distinct indie film vibe.   Kogonada is known for his distinctive style and philosophical themes, as the film explores the possibility of restoring belief in love and the potential to overcome cynicism as one gets older, overcoming that creeping doubt that lingers, where there’s a wonderful turn in one of the more dramatic scenes with Mitski’s rendition of Peter Townsend’s seminal song, Let My Love Open the Door | A Big Bold Beautiful Journey ... YouTube (2:43), which seems to be the missing key of the entire film, allowing them to begin anew, their lives forever altered, offering just a hint of hope that despite all obstacles, there is a pathway to a brighter future.  If you stay until the end of the closing credits, which features a breakthrough dance sequence, the last sound we hear are feet approaching a door that closes shut, suggesting the journey is now complete.  While it may not be what some people have come to expect, it does exude charm, feeling like the perfect antidote for these politically chaotic and overly traumatic times.