{"id":277907,"date":"2025-06-06T11:54:48","date_gmt":"2025-06-06T11:54:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/2025\/06\/06\/bogancloch-review-film-and-landscape-are-as-one-2\/"},"modified":"2025-06-25T17:08:11","modified_gmt":"2025-06-25T17:08:11","slug":"bogancloch-review-film-and-landscape-are-as-one-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/2025\/06\/06\/bogancloch-review-film-and-landscape-are-as-one-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Bogancloch review \u2013 film and landscape are as one"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The lure of the Scottish wilderness was too much to resist as Ben Rivers returns there for his latest feature.<\/p>\n

In his 2011 film Two Years at Sea<\/em>, artist\/filmmaker Ben Rivers decamped to Scottish wilds with his hand-cranked 16mm camera and hung out with a bearded loner named Jake Williams. The film did little more than capture the everyday minutiae of a man who had chosen to partition himself from urban society and the company of others, yet the resulting film played more like a pastoral post-apocalyptic riff on something like The Omega Man<\/em>. It\u2019s over a decade later and we\u2019re back in the woods with Jake, still eking out a happy existence in his tumbledown shack and drinking in the pleasures of the rugged and serene landscape.<\/p>\n

The key difference with this new film, Bogancloch<\/em>, is that there is more interaction with other people, with Jake now presented as someone slowly reintegrating with a primitive form of society \u2013 but strictly on his own terms. There\u2019s a sequence where he\u2019s shown with a group of intrigued highschoolers as he demonstrates the working of the cosmos with use of a wilting pub parasol and some old bits of string. Later on, he\u2019s seen leading a nighttime sing-along of thematically fecund Scottish folk music. There\u2019s something enlivening and hopeful in Jake\u2019s world this time, where he sees potential and companionship in other people, even if for very short and sweet bursts. <\/p>\n

The material is elevated by Rivers\u2019 typically-fastidious formal approach, where high contrast black-and-white film is processed in a way to leave glitches and blemishes in the frame, like the film itself is a relic that\u2019s been dug up from underneath a trees tump. Indeed, all of Rivers\u2019 films contain some element of this \u201cfound\u201d quality to them, and in this instance you\u2019re made to feel as if Jake himself would have concocted this thing from old ends of film reels discovered in a ditch. The film and landscape are as one, with the visual degradation echoed in the moss, rust and grime we see on the screen.<\/p>\n

With so little context given about Jake\u2019s situation and how he came to be out there alone, the film allows you instead to impose your own backstories and psychological justifications. There\u2019s one sequence in which he starts rifling through a box of old music tapes and giving a couple of them a listen; the crackling music sounds like it\u2019s from Asia somewhere, maybe India. You begin to wonder if Jake had been there and kept these tapes. Or maybe he was once married to an Indian woman way back when and we\u2019re suddenly party to his own little trip down memory lane. It\u2019s refreshing that Rivers and Williams have an understanding that, just because the camera is pointing at you, it doesn\u2019t mean you need to narrate your actions and speak to the audience down the lens.<\/p>\n

And yet, there are elements of performance in the film, where scenes have been pre-agreed and set up for show. In the climactic shot of Two Years at Sea<\/em>, Jake is seen floating slowly across a lake. In this film, he warms up the water in an old tin bath and just marinates there, this time the camera itself floating away like a bubble caught on the breeze, leaving us with another vision of blissful contentment.<\/p>\n

To keep celebrating the craft of film, we have to rely on the support of our members. Join Club LWLies today and receive access to a host of benefits.<\/a><\/strong><\/em> <\/p>\n

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