Earthly Slumbers

Credit: Steve Tanner

Three years ago, Cornish director Mark Jenkin’s thrillingly original breakthrough feature Bait, a deeply personal story about tensions in a Cornish town between locals and tourists over the gentrification of their community, saw him earn a much-deserved BAFTA for Outstanding British debut. His experimental style of shooting on handheld black & white film using his trusty Clockwork Bolex camera, first seen in his powerful 2015 short film Bronco’s House, was anarchic and rejuvenating in an ever-increasing digitalised era. 

This makes his latest film Enys Men a completely different proposition, one marketed as a horror film whilst shot in colour. Set in 1973 on a remote Cornish island, the film follows a wildlife volunteer (Mary Woodvine) who lives a lonesome life in a quaint cottage and records daily observations of a group of rare flowers off the cliff edge. But when she uncovers a lichen growing on one of the flowers, Mary starts to have surreal visions about the island, from dead miners to a group of school children dressed in virgin white prancing out of her cottage. 

Jenkin sat down with MASSIVE to talk further about his latest handheld creation, shooting on colour, his favourite sound to recreate and his Silent Dancing Grain 13 Manifesto.

MASSIVE: How did you come up with the idea for Enys Men?

Mark Jenkin: It all comes from my youth in West Cornwall where there were these standing stones not far from my Gran’s house, and you were kind of haunted by the mythology that surrounds them. These are not true tales but rather Christian stories that have been applied to much older beliefs. So for instance, if you do something that’s wrong in the eyes of God, you will be turned to stone, which is quite a scary thought.

But off the back of Bait, I was reading a lot of people saying that it almost felt like a horror film at times, which I had to think about and wonder why. Obviously, Bait is not because if you read the script, it’s like a 90-minute soap opera. But those comments felt like an invitation to make one, so I wrote the script of Enys Men in three nights and then read it back and thought, “This isn’t a horror film at all.” I realised that the elements of horror in Bait aren’t to do with the content but with form, the way that the picture and sound worked together. So that was my starting point for Enys Men.

Credit: Steve Tanner

I was listening to your BFI At Home conversation with Robert Eggers about The Lighthouse, and you’re very keen on films where if you strip form away, the narrative disintegrates.

I like films that draw attention to the fact they’re films. Our suspension of disbelief can withstand pointing at the artifice, and I like the artifice.

Film can create an atmosphere that you cannot describe with text. It’s like trying to describe the most amazing dream to somebody: as soon as you attempt to explain it, you just destroy it. It either sounds like you’re making it up, or it sounds boring because dreams aren’t narrative, they’re atmosphere. That’s why they’re so powerful, and I think film-wise, when you’re communicating the atmosphere, that’s when films are truly brilliant. That doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be narrative, but films can exist without one.

It sounds like the camera is a very personal object to you.

It’s my best friend! I love the camera as an object as I can just sit here, hold it, play with the lens and all that kind of stuff, in particular the Bolex which I shoot all my work on. It’s a very limited camera which I think is its greatest strength, but you can also subvert its mechanics. So Bronco’s House and Bait were both shot silently, in B&W with a very limited set of lights, and then I hand-processed the negative myself in my studio. The big change with Enys Men was that it’s in colour so it, obviously, looks different but I didn’t hand-process the negative.

What was the challenge working in colour?

How could I affect the look of the film in the way that I like to? With Bronco’s House and Bait it was very easy, because I was hand-processing the negative. So if I wind it through the developer too quickly, there’s too much flicker; if I wind it too slowly, the grain might not be right; if the developer is too hot and then I wash it too cold, the emulsion might reticulate. So all of my imperfections in my workflow are present and forever in those films. With Enys Men though, I was shooting colour and then it was getting sent to the lab at Kodak.

So you lost that control?

I lost the ability to fuck it up! But then I realised there were ways of doing that to an extent. For instance, I could let a bit of light in when I was loading the film and that would fuck up the negative a little bit, so there are light leaks that I left in the edit. That’s human imperfection.

Credit: Steve Tanner

It’s interesting you point that out as there is a moment in Enys Men involving a shot of the volunteer’s notepad, and the film literally stops. Was that deliberate?

Yes, it’s a freeze-frame that I added in the edit because there’s a splice in the film and you can see the splicing tape in-shot. I love seeing the materiality of film so I thought, “I’m gonna do that and see what it means later.” People notice it, and have different theories about why it’s freeze-framed at that point. One of those theories will be right, but I still don’t know which one it is yet.

What is your favourite sound to recreate?

Paradoxically, what I get the most satisfaction is when I create a realistic sound effect that nobody even notices. So, for instance, in Enys Men when the volunteer sits down at the table and moves the chair, that’s all done with a fake bit of wooden floor that I’ve got in my studio, which I also use for footsteps, and a little table that moves on the wooden floor. That does every furniture sound I’ve ever done. It’s all smoke and mirrors.

Just over 10 years ago now, you penned the Silent Landscape Dancing Grain 13 Manifesto…

While sat in the bath on Christmas Day eating spaghetti!

Do you think Enys Men fits your manifesto?

Not specifically, but I think I’ve gone full circle with the manifesto. At the time it was just when I got back into shooting film, and the list of rules were a way of stopping me from financially bankrupting myself because if I started shooting in the same way I did with digital, I’m just going to film the shit out of everything I see, and it’s going to cost tens of thousands of pounds. So I wrote a list of rules to control that. 

Originally I never meant anyone to see the manifesto, but I put it on Twitter when I didn’t have any followers and the first film I made according to the manifesto was Cape Cornwall Calling/All The White Horses, which then got selected to screen at the Experimental Film Festival in Paris. And when we went, the festival’s daily magazine published it on the front page so then it was seen by everyone! I don’t think I’ve ever made a film since that has stuck to the manifesto, but a film like Enys Men, which is realised on a very low budget and working within limitations, sticks to the spirit of it.

Enys Men is out in UK cinemas from January 13.