History tends to be presented to us in a form that is either nostalgic or heroic – whether it’s the valour of soldiers on the battlefield, or the beauty of the simpler existences lived by those in a time when we weren’t so preoccupied with modern problems. What we don’t often see – and for good reason – are stories where nothing actually occurs, where the core of the narrative is intentionally built around banality more than anything else. These are not always particularly exciting or compelling, but they do have a very clear purpose and tend to be enjoyed by those with a penchant for more authentic depictions of life. This is the case for Athina Rachel Tsangari, who chooses this approach when crafting Harvest, her adaptation of the novel by Jim Crace, which is set in an undetermined time in the medieval era (and anyone who has ever dipped their toes into the history of the period, this is an exceptionally long amount of time whose exact temporal boundaries are almost entirely the subject of continious debate), in what appears to be a village somewhere in the place we now know as Scotland. This is essentially the core of the story – the focus is Walter Thirsk, a meek and reserved young villager who observes various changes begin to move towards them, particularly with the arrival of some wealthy noblemen who intend to destroy the village and replace it with farmlands for their own personal gain. It’s a simple premise, and one that fits the director’s aesthetic and conceptual inventory perfectly, being an offbeat but daring exploration of the human condition, handcrafted by a filmmaker who has always had an interest in the darker side of society. Here she turns her gaze towards the people who lived roughly a thousand years ago, hoping to highlight that, while architecture, clothing and amenities may change, social structure has always remained contentious, using this as the foundation for an unsettling exploration of historical figures to whom monuments may not be built, but still have stories worth telling, even if they do veer towards the slightly disconcerting more than it does the inspirational.

Understanding the precise themes of this film requires us to look beyond the story being told and instead look at the deeper implications, which is where so many of the more intriguing qualities reside. The foundation of the film is built around a radical exploration of the past in a way where the simplest details far supercede the grander moments – in any other work, it would be the wealthy landowners that would be the focus, since their dedication to bringing the region into a new industrial era (or whatever the medieval equivalent would be) is the reason historians even know as much as we do about the period. The impoverished villagers were not of much interest to us, since they were little more than statistics – and its through this intentionally myopic view of the past that we find Tsangari building this film, which positions ordinary people as the heroes, individuals whose names have been lost forever, and who are nothing more than statistics, their remnants being merely trivial pieces of much larger puzzles that we continue to build. Beneath this, the film is making some additional statements on the history of the period – it is an exploration of the class system, something that predates just about any formal political system. Even in the medieval era, people were sorted into categories based on the most insignificant minutiae – how much land they owned, how much livestock they cared for and even the kinds of clothing that they wore. One intriguing quality that we find existing throughout this film – and indeed something we notice through all of Tsangari’s work – is an interest in the elements that divide people, with Harvest being a natural continuation of Chevalier, which also focused on social and cultural divisions in an equally challenging way. Feudal land ownership, interpersonal relationships, very crude political systems and gender roles are all given some focus throughout this film, which is a far more intriguing work than we would expect based on a cursory glance, and clearly the aspects that drew the director to Crace’s novel, which is equally as challenging but extremely insightful in terms of how it examines these same subjects through a more unorthodox lens.

Very little actually happens in Harvest, and while in the hands of another filmmaker this would seem like a criticism, in the case of this film, it’s complimentary. Tsangari is attracted to the idea of challenging the literary status quo by creating a film that refuses to play by conventional standards. Both tonally and visually, the film is quite peculiar – we can’t quite categorise it, since it exists somewhere between folk horror, dark comedy and psychological thriller, but yet doesn’t even seem to be able to fully embrace these classifications either. It’s a film that resists being labelled, and instead chooses to embrace its stylistic and structural ambiguity. The overall experience is certainly one that is not bound to be forgotten, especially in how Tsangari builds something that feels so much more original than many similarly-themed films that we’ve seen from time to time. She finds a remote location somewhere in Scotland to serve as the setting for the film, which refuses to clarify where or when it takes place – and even from a purely visual level, the film reminds us of the beauty of the natural world. This is not some idealistic view of pastoral life, but rather a brutal depiction of the supposed simple life led by people centuries ago, where the conditions were nothing if not entirely harsh, and which eventually becomes the foundation for something much more profound, which this film is interested in exploring. The production design and costuming are simple, with an abundance of thought being put into every detail – how else can we possibly describe something that is so visually striking, while also being deeply unnerving in a way that is absolutely worth discussing? It takes a lot of effort to make the past seem so hideously authentic, and while Tsangari is not the kind of filmmaker that intends to redirect our attention to the boldness of her vision, but rather allows for the images to speak for themselves, telling a story that underlines the bleakness of reality and shows the world in a way that is often contradictory to the fawning, navel-gazing view of the past that we often tend to find in these works.

The director manages to assemble quite an intriguing cast for Harvest, which may not be star-studded in the way that we would expect, but is filled with actors who are most certainly going to define the industry going forward. The most prominent name in the cast is Caleb Landry Jones, who has made something of a career for himself playing these offbeat eccentrics who very rarely seem to be functioning like normal human beings, yet always manages to find the internal complexity within them. Considering he has been known to do slightly too much on occasion, it’s encouraging to see Jones dialling it back just enough to underline the strangeness of the character without coming across as needlessly offbeat, which is what is most important in this case. Harry Melling continues to impress, playing the part of the de facto mayor of this town who sees whatever little power he had slipping away as a result of being usurped by more powerful forces, here represented by the delightfully insidious Frank Dillane, who has been acting for the better part of two decades, but has only started to draw our attention in recent years. Rosy McEwen, Arinzé Kene, Thalissa Teixeira and Stephen McMillian all have proven themselves as actors to watch and bring the same sense of complexity to this film. Ultimately, every character in Harvest represents entire generations of people, existing as representatives of a system far deeper and more complex than simply just being ordinary villagers, and Tsangari makes sure that everything makes sense and fits into the story, while also not avoiding leaning into the characterisation as the aspect that pushes the film along. As visually striking as the film may be, there is something much more profound lingering beneath the surface, which emerges gradually and with an abundance of sincerity, often being quietly unsettling in a way that we can appreciate, especially when we see how strong their performances become through tackling some very intimidating but intriguing conceptual ideas.

The best way to describe Harvest is as a historical excavation, where the focus is not on unearthing human artefacts, but rather the lives of the people who lived hundreds of years ago. Tsangari is not concerned with rewriting history or presenting it as some grandiose, impossibly complex period, nor does she want to engage in the practice of revising history (the most that is done is through the language the characters speak – the director and her co-screenwriter Joslyn Barnes use a modern form of English, which would have most definitely not been spoken at the time, since depending on the exact region, some version of Middle English or Scots would have been spoken), but rather presenting it as something far more complex than we could understand. The past was grimy, gritty and muddy, and this film underlines this perfectly through an uncomfortable and often slightly cruel examination of the past. It’s not a fawning tribute to history, but rather a concerted attempt to challenge our understanding of it. Driven by mood and visuals more than a particular story where anything notable happens, the film becomes a daring and provocative existential odyssey that examines class division, displacement, the exploitation of workers and the fragility of communal life, which certainly still resonates in many ways today. In refusing spectacle, the director achieves something far more disquieting, where she reminds us that history’s most devastating transformations don’t always arrive with fanfare, but rather slow, imperceptible shifts. Harvest resists easy categorisation and conventional momentum, and instead chooses to carve out a space for itself as a different kind of historical storytelling, one that is austere, unsettling and profoundly human.