Movie Review

Coscient/ Astral Films, starring Emily Watson (Bess MacNiel) and Stellan Narsgard (Jan), 112 minutes, 1996.

This is a love story with a dark, comic side to it. Bess lives in a small island community in the north of Scotland. The community is now dominated in its social life by the oil industry and is a staging area for the off shore rigs. Most women of the town know the loneliness and danger of having loved ones away for long periods of time and the possibility of serious injury or death. Bess's own brother Sam was killed in a rig accident and at that time Bess seemed to have a profound psychotic episode.

The story begins in the happiness of Bess's marriage to Jan, a rig worker who flies in by helicopter with some of his mates from work. Bess is described by her widowed sister-in-law as a warm, generous and accepting person, who is the reason she stayed on the island after her husband was killed. We see another side to Bess as sweet, naïve, 'not right in the head' and susceptible to suggestion. She is passionately in love with Jan and when it is time for him to return for his shift on the rig she creates a frightful scene.

The church does not fare well in this story; portrayed as stern, moralistic, patriarchal and exclusive, not holding to strangers from off the island marrying the local girls. There are two funeral scenes where the elders rather easily consign the dead to Hell. No ambiguity here!

There are several scenes, almost comic, of Bess at prayer. She prays in two voices. The one voice is the high little girl voice that confesses sins and asks for God's favours. The other is the stern voice of God answering her prayers and setting limits; sometimes scolding. This voice is remarkably realistic and shows a person with a clear sense of her self and the effect of her behaviour. It is disarming to the viewer. One time in their first separation Bess prays that Jan will come home 'right now'. God says that he will be home in 10 days but she says she can't wait. Jan does come home because he is seriously injured, so injured it is expected that he will never walk again. He is paralyzed but will live. Bess only prayed that he will live but is consumed with guilt and shame for causing his injury because of her prayer.

Jan and Bess strike an odd bargain, even twisted. First Jan proposes that she get on with life by divorcing him (except that the church would never allow it). This upsets Bess to the point that she runs away. When they are reconciled Jan speaks of their love, its power and how he can hardly remember what it was like to make love with her. He proposes that she find a man, make love with him, come back and tell Jan about it and the power of that love will keep him alive! Bess is devastated by the request, then makes some tentative attempts to seduce her doctor (who shows compassionate restraint and understanding) and then becomes a scandal as the town tramp. Jan shows some improvement though this is discounted by her sister in law and the doctor as the normal ups and downs of a spinal chord injury. Bess is torn by the demands of the church and her conscience and her love for Jan and her desire to save him. Eventually her risky behaviour takes her to servicing the crews of freighters that come to the village to supply the rigs. In offering her self she is beaten up and injured so badly she dies. Following her death there is an inquest and her doctor gives testimony that she had an immature personality but instead of using terms like neurosis or psychosis perhaps one could just say that she was good. The judge presses him "So, in your medical opinion, the deceased suffered from being Good?" "Yes", replies the doctor.

Bess is a striking Christ Figure whose family also fears for her safety and sanity. She sacrifices her all in order to save the one she loves. She is "a fool for Christ" and clearly amongst those that will inherit the earth even while tarted up in net stockings and tight red skirt. While the church conducts one of its ceremonies for consigning her to hell her body is spirited away, Joseph of Arimathea like, by Jan (now miraculously hobbling on crutches) and his friends and given a burial in a grave of their choosing. The symbol of resurrection is a mysterious ringing of bells which had been forbidden by the church.