A Yorkshire farmer called Joe is asked if he’s seen much of the world. Joe, a gruff, unkempt young man who says little and rarely leaves his messy cottage except to tend the sheep that roam the surrounding land, considers the question. Having duly pondered the extent of his cosmopolitanism, he answers: “Dover. To pick up some spuds.”
I don’t know if this remark was meant to be funny, a droll comment perhaps at the expense of northern parochialism. But I smiled, and it was a welcome opportunity, a rare burst of sunlight in skies crowded with rain-sodden clouds. Dark River, the film in which this scene occurs, demands a kind of hushed respect, but boy, it’s a grim, hard slog.
The question is put to Joe (Mark Stanley) by his sister Alice (Ruth Wilson, very good in a demanding role). Alice has been away from the family farm for years now, earning good money as a sheep shearer in further-flung places than Dover. But the death of her father has brought her back home.
Dad is glimpsed, at telling moments, as a mute ghost (played by Sean Bean), and his spectral influence hovers over the grown-up siblings throughout the film. Alice, we realise through the flashbacks that director Clio Barnard introduces into the present-day story with sinewy grace, had her reasons to delay coming back. The look of quiet satisfaction she takes on hearing from Joe that her dad was in some pain before he died hints at the troubles afflicting their relationship.
Played by Sean Bean as a mute ghost, Dad’s spectral influence hovers over the grown-up siblings throughout the film
Neglected by Joe (whose farming skills are far inferior to Alice’s), the family home is now over-run with rats; but it’s less the vermin than the memories of a blighted childhood that deter Alice from spending much time there, especially what occurred in the bedroom she occupied as a teenager.
