A Field in England

Treasure hunt time in A Field in England

Ben Wheatley's A Field in England, from 2013, seems to divide viewers and I am somewhat ambivalent about it. The film at times, threatens to descend into pretentious drivel, but I was entranced enough by the craft displayed by Mr. Wheatley and his collaborator, Amy Jump, to guardedly recommend the film. Any film dealing with psychedelics, in this case magic mushrooms, will tend to flirt with incomprehensibility and a Field in England certainly does. Compounding this, the film is set during the English Civil War, shot in black and white (a bold choice for a film concerning psychedelics) and eschews any modern frame of reference. The stubborn intransigence of Mr. Wheatley and Ms. Jump's aesthetic choices seem to condemn this film to cult status, but also assures it has its own singularity and authenticity.

The film's characters are looking for treasure in said field, but Laurie Rose's exquisite cinematography and Mr. Wheatley's camera placement seem to indicate the actual treasure in life is not papal gold, but the splendor of the natural world. The film wants to evoke the world in a grain of sand and it achieves this goal. Hidden treasure, "...the wealth that our forefather hid/ Within the messy entrails of the earth" as Marlowe put it in Dr. Faustus, was a preoccupation of the age, but A Field in England suggests that men can find wonders and wealth in nature more valuable than filthy lucre.