How pleasant and uncommon it is to make someone's day

Continuing my trip up The Guardian's Top 50 Films of 2021 

#26 : The World To Come

Katherine Waterston and Vanessa Kirby play two wives who fall in love amid the grinding exhaustion and violence of pioneer life in a tale of secret passions in frontier-era America.

Hmmm - I can't say I'm holding out much enthusiasm for this one.  I'm sure it will look very fine and all be very worthy, but can't help but suspect it will struggle to hold my attention - something like a frontier-set Ammonite.  My guess for the plot is that life is hard and seems pointless until the wives discover each other, at which point they discover a reason for living, but then they either get found out or one of them decides they have to give it up.  Let's see how close I am, eh?

Well whatever the plot is, it REALLY took its time getting anywhere - I would have given up on it under normal circumstances, but I do have to admit that with 30 minutes to go, I was finally drawn in and intrigued as to how it was going to end.  And it didn't end the way I was suspecting - I was certainly on the right lines with my guess as to how the plot was going to go, but I'd never have guessed the details.  It's a more obsessive tale and certainly has more surprises than I was expecting, but I'd be lying if I gave the impression the story races along.  The diary based structure is an interesting choice - particularly when some of the details given for some of the days are very brief and inconsequential.  I suspect this is intended to show that most days on the frontier were the same and hence any differences from the norm were of note - it really didn't look like a fun life.

It's all very well acted.  I was certainly expecting quality from Vanessa Kirby, even though I'm only really aware of her from the Mission Impossible films - which don't really feel like a reliable quality indicator, but she's really very good in them.  She's also supposed to be great in The Crown, but that's on my list of things I plan to see but will never get round to.  I didn't think that I was aware of any of Katherine Waterson's work, but it turns out I've seen quite a few things she's in, all of which are at least watchable - Robot And Frank, Steve Jobs, Alien : Covenant, Fantastic Beasts and Logan Lucky (which is a surprisingly enjoyable film, worth watching for Daniel Craig's hair if nothing else).  

There are some other people in the film, but they don't really warrant much comment - the men are so dour that it's little wonder the women find their attention drawn to each other.  Casey Affleck is always good value for that sort of thing though and it was also nice to Christopher Abbott in his third film on these best of lists (after Black Bear and Possessor - all of which he made in the same year) - but neither of them are exactly stretched in their role.

It certainly looks very good though - the scenery is so beautiful from the first scene and the period details are very impressive (particularly the frontier house they built just to burn down).  The weather also does some heavy lifting in this film and some of the sound work undertaken around this is very good - it tested my speakers much more than I was expecting.

All in all, it's a very worthy film - well written, acted and directed.  But it's all a bit too literary and restrained for my tastes - and really remarkably little actually happens.  If you want some idea of what frontier life looked like, then this feels like it's probably a good representation but I can't help but feel the story isn't overly accurate.  At the time of writing, the film is available to stream only on Apple TV or to buy in all the other usual places - but I really can't say I'd recommend it.  One for the critics as opposed to normal people, methinks.

#27 - Tick, tick...
#25 - An interesting, if not necessarily great, film