Beneath a Harvest Sky
Director: Aron Gaudet and Gita Pullapilly
Starring: Emory Cohen, Aidan Gillen and Callan McAuliffe
★★★★ (out of five)
“HANGING out with Caspar I know somethin’ crazy’s gonna happen, but at least somethin’ will have happened,” proclaims Dominic Roy of his good friend Casper Cody in Beneath a Harvest Sky, an excellent edgy drama about small-town teens being overwhelmed by big events.
Casper and Dominic are played by relative newcomers Emory Cohen and Callan McAuliffe, both giving riveting performances.
The movie is written, produced and directed by independent film-makers Aron Gaudet and Gita Pullapilly, scoring a hit at the 2013 Toronto Film Festival, and is in line for festivals in Britain and Ireland later this year.
Set in Maine, near the US-Canadian border, the story follows the fortunes of Casper and Dominic during a single week at harvest time. Themes symbolising reaping what you’ve sown crossover with personal choice and responsibility, as the two pals finish school on the cusp of entering the adult world.
They dream of escaping humdrum hometown life and moving to Boston but into the mix comes Aidan Gillen as Casper’s estranged drug-smuggling father Carlton, a sleaze-ball with no interest in setting his son a good example.
The dramatic crisis at the heart of the narrative turns on how deep a snare Carlton’s influence might set for Casper and Dominic. Even as the story focuses on the boys there’s a constant sense of his hovering, threatening presence.
Gillen is remarkable, conveying his dominance with actor’s economy — facial gestures, body shifts, hand flicks. “You need to know the business,” he inveigles his son.
There are echoes here of Debra Granik’s Winter’s Bone (2010) or John Foley’s At Close Range (1986). These movies include notable performances from John Hawkes and Christopher Walken as unscrupulous sorts drawing younger family members into criminality, and Gillen’s is as unsettlingly credible as these.
The film is also convincing in capturing a sense of place. America’s north-east corner holds historical Irish influences (there are towns in the region named Dublin, Belfast and Derry) and the characters speak with Irish-inflected accents.
The unstable hand-held camera expresses tension between entrapment and possible freedom, while moving between cramped, derelict interiors and sumptuous scenery in wide-open spaces. Scenes that show characters harvesting the blue potato (a staple crop) and going on night-time moose-chases, indicate that Gaudet and Pullapilly know the life of the locality.
Apart from an unnecessarily extended denouement, Beneath a Harvest Sky is as strong a depiction of youthful angst and anger as American cinema has yet produced, going back to Rebel Without a Cause (1955) and The Wild One (1953).
As Casper Cody, Emory Cohen mightn’t have the iconic status of James Dean or Marlon Brando, but his acting is less showy or “cinematic” and his restraint consequently makes him somehow more authentic.
Beneath a Harvest Sky is currently available from iTunes and Amazon Instant Video
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