Rose of Nevada

If you saw Mark Jenkin's "Enys Men" then you might have an idea what to expect in this similarly photographed and styled mystery. This time, it's a Cornish fishing boat called the "Rose of Nevada" which has a reputation mired in suspense that serves as the focal point. It requires a crew of three and those consist the enigmatic captain (Francis Magee), "Liam" (Callum Turner) and "Nick" (George MacKay). The latter needs the money after his attempt to fix the leaky kitchen roof left him and his family with a man-sized hole. The outgoing charmer "Liam" is something of a mysterious young man, too, with a provenance about which we can only guess and then there is their skipper who resists any of the shore based temptations even when they return with an hold full of fish. It's on their first return from sea that their stories starts to twist. "Nick" goes home and nothing is as he left it just days before. "Liam", too, comes back to an altogether different scenario too. What is occuring? Are they in some sort of time loop? Has disaster befallen the ship in some way before? Are any of these men really whom they appear to be? I did like the grainy 16mm filming here, and that goes some way to creating a sense of peril but the dearth of dialogue and the repetiveness of the scenes (just how many times did I need to see them gut a fish?) left me feeling I was paddling rather than swimming. I didn't really feel that any of the three leading characters were sufficiently developed or that the underlying premiss was delivered with enough potency. I just wasn't very enthralled here. MacKay has more of the play here, and does well enough as his frustration expands, but Turner doesn't really have enough to get his teeth into and so contributes only peripherally to what might have been quite a complex story had it been more substantial and detailed. It's has a creepiness to the production, but the writing leaves too little meat on the bones and I left just a bit underwhelmed.

Surreality is an intriguing premise in entertainment, and, when skillfully employed (generally in a sci-fi context), it can make for compelling viewing. But deft handling of the material involved is what makes all the difference, and that’s where this latest effort from writer-director Mark Jenkin doesn’t quite hit the mark. Life in a coastal fishing village in the UK’s Cornwall region hasn’t been what it once was for 30 years. Overfishing, coupled with the mysterious disappearance of the fishing boat Rose of Nevada, left local anglers without a resource to exploit, not to mention more than a little bit spooked. However, when the craft suddenly and inexplicably reappears in the harbor one day three decades later, the remaining residents of the now-rundown community are even more mystified. That’s especially true for the boat’s owner, Mike (Edward Rowe), and the widow of one of the missing crew members, Tina (Rosalind Eleazar). They wonder what to do now that the trawler has reappeared, but they ultimately decide to put the boat back into operation. Mike hires a crew of three, skipper Murgey (Francis Magee) and two down-on-their-luck mates looking to better their lives with new jobs, Nick (George MacKay) and Liam (Callum Turner). And, on their first voyage, they bring home a huge catch. But what surprises them when they return is that the village appears to be bustling with people and activity again – just as it was 30 years earlier (before Nick was even born). The reason for this is that it actually is 30 years earlier, and the crew members are viewed by the locals (including the past selves of individuals from their own time) as the crew of the boat when it went missing. It’s mind-boggling to the returnees, to be sure, prompting them (particularly Nick) to try and figure out what’s going on. In this sense, the story has very much the feel of an episode of The Twilight Zone or The Outer Limits but dressed up in what it likes to think of as slicker packaging. And I say “what it likes to think of,” because, frankly, this view of itself is somewhat inflated. For instance, in an effort to avoid revealing too much too soon, the film’s pacing is needlessly dragged out and overly cryptic, qualities that easily try viewer patience. Things admittedly get better when the big plot twist finally emerges, but it also remains somewhat enigmatic, as if the narrative doesn’t quite know which tangent to take. In many ways, this offering ends up following a trajectory very much like that found in the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode “Things Past” (1996), suggesting a dearth of originality in scripting. In addition, the picture’s cinematography seems off, too, through its use of a purposely grainy, pock-marked filming technique to suggest that the story is indeed being depicted on film shot in the past, an approach used by the filmmaker in his previous offering, “Enys Men” (2022). In that case, however, the story was set in the 1970s (and effectively captured the period as such), while this one takes place 20-50 years later, with footage that comes across as out of place. Hence, because improvements in photographic quality and film preservation emerged in those ensuing years, it’s difficult to fathom how the film quality would have degraded to such a degree during that time frame (yes, it’s truly possible to go to the well one too many times). Given all of these issues, then, “Rose of Nevada” ultimately feels a little too needlessly padded for its own good. As I noted previously, this release reminds me a lot of two classic sci-fi TV series, and a work of those vehicles’ length (30-60 minutes) probably would have been more suitable than the current nearly two-hour runtime. To its credit, the picture features fine performances from Turner and MacKay, who gives one of his most polished and most mature performances to date. But that’s hardly enough to save this adrift vessel. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that it should have remained lost at sea, but it certainly could have used a more capable navigator.