Cinema
The Navigator
(`PG', Gate Notting Hill)
Fatal vision
Hilary Mantel
rian Barbara Tuchman, sees the 14th cen- tury as particularly calamitous; he has set his extraordinary fantasy film in Cumbria In the year 1348, where an isolated hamlet of mining families finds itself in the path of the Black Death. Desperate to avert the coming disaster, they begin to listen to a small boy (I-famish McFarlane) who is known for his premonitions and dreams; without vision, the people will certainly perish. Nine-year-old Griffin sees a great cathedral, which he says is on the other side of the earth; and he persuades the villagers that with their mining expertise they can tunnel there, taking local copper to cast into a cross which they will place on the spire of the cathedral. The offering, they believe, will cause God to look more favourably on their community. This Gotham-like enterprise is crowned with success. Six of the villagers begin tunnelling, led by Connor, Griffin's idol- ised elder brother. They discover a com- plex of sewers, which are recognised as such by the only member of the pilgrim band to have been to a town. Following them; they find themselves not just at the other side of the world but in the middle of the 20th century. They are in a city in New Zealand; it is night, and as they emerge from the ground they take the street lights to be stars.
The film, until now monochrome, flow- ers into colour, and into a realism shot through by disconcerting images, odd jux- tapositions and meaningful cross- correspondences. There is an implicit par- allel between the Cumbrian community, whose isolation and innocence cannot save it from an invisible, creeping threat, and modern New Zealand, menaced by nuclear power, pollution, Aids. There are times when the film seems likely to sink under the weight of allegory, but the vitality and ingenuity of the direction buoy it up; its images of contagion and purity, its themes of sacrifice, are powerful and universal ones. And it is visually brilliant, with its snowscapes and tints of azure and flame. Some of it was shot at Lake Harris, in New Zealand's Southern Alps, in intense cold and in locations accessible only by helicop- ter; it was only when the money began to run out and the director got frostbite that he was prepared to settle for artificial snow and easier ways of doing things.
The celestial city which Griffin has promised turns out to be a foretaste of hell. The travellers have to . make their way through a terrifying industrial landscape, across freeways and railway tracks. They imagine that the cathedral will dominate the skyline, as it would in a mediaeval city, but in fact it is dwarfed by modern build- ings. It is machines, rather than human beings they encounter, though at one point they run across a group of foundry workers who remark that they look as if they've been a long time in the bush. When they do arrive at the cathedral, they face the dangerous, ill-omened task of putting their cross in place. Dawn returns the adventur- ers to reality; and the dream is fatal to the dreamer.
The performances, though fresh, sincere and forceful, are variable in quality. It is clear that the accent coach has done her best, but the Cumbrian villagers sound a cosmopolitan lot. There are frequent mad- dening occasions when the action slows to 'Blast!'
a standstill and the actors, in their various voices and manners, intone 'Godspeed'. Vincent Ward can create a humorous set-piece, but does not know when his film is inherently ridiculous. The Navigator at times provokes giggles, but taken as a whole, as a remarkable deployment of controlled but vivid imagination, it also evokes a certain wondering respect.
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