Mark Jenkin is no rookie. This fifty-year-old Brit has been twenty investigating cinematically in your concerns. Short films, feature films, documentaries, or all at once, now the filmmaker has jumped into the foreground with his latest feature film, ‘Bait‘, winner of BAFTA, is the most groundbreaking debut of the year as it is the first production of Kate Byers and Linn Waite, old contributors to their previous work in other formats.
The fisherman’s loneliness in the background
Filmed in Bolex, with 16mm monochrome film and no direct sound, Mark Jenkin’s latest film is the most spectacular example of pure cinema you’ll see this year. Tragicomedy of a summer morning, ‘Bait’ moves between the most radical experimentation and the very assembly of attractions. All mixed by hand in old celluloid of the mid-seventies.
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Relative not far from the last masterpiece of Robert Eggers, with whom he shares much more than it seems at first glance, the English director’s film is an interdimensional and emotional journey for all those raised or spent a good part of their life in high tourist areas of high season.
Jenkin, screenwriter, editor, cinematographer, composer and director, he shoots to kill and leaves no hostages in his bleak vision of global decomposition (or should I say gentrification) from the most absolute personal internalization. Fortunately, between outburst and blow of reality, between pint and low, between calderilla and discussions, there are a bit of humor as black as a Guinness.
Prince Hamlet of the Tides
The trip you propose does not stay there. His powerful look turns her into anachronism and cheating, in a sensation that we lost a long time ago and recover with an eyedropper: that of seeing something belonging to another was lost and forgotten in time. The shocking thing comes when you verify that you are counting the present.
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His alleged technical suicide yields a rough film, but it is also, cinematographically and narratively speaking, ‘Bait’ is a round and stimulating job. Bolex cameras barely film a couple of minutes of footage at once, so there are few long shots that attract attention.
Instead, Jenkin offers beautiful short shots and an incredible pace. One hundred and thirty rolls of 1976 Kodak film Jenkin used in his monochrome adventure. Special mention, of course, for a choral cast where Giles King, Edward Rowe, Simon Shepherd and Mary Woodvine shine with their own light.
Anyway, what ends up rounding this spectacular postmodern tragedy are the almost supernatural apparitions, pure fantastic cinema from another century, from the father of the protagonist. His intrahistory, always present and actually triggering the plot, raise ‘Bait’ to the category of True classic forged in steel. Almost a Hamlet of the tides.
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