3/31/2023 0 Comments Ikos hide out ghost storyPhysically the fringes of this battle are delineated by a hedgerow whence Whitehead is seen fleeing. Except for O’Neil, the characters all meet each other at the fringes of a battle as Whitehead is seen fleeing his soon to be dead master. In the narrative there are five characters: Friend, Cutler, O’Neil, Jacob and Whitehead. Thinking de-constructively about the film I began catching myself courting the haunted thoughts of Jacques Derrida throughout my many viewings of this film. ‘Noted’ because their provenance, along with their perceived futures, is everything except noted, ‘represented’ because the characters’ presentation of themselves change as they move throughout the field and within each conjuring, and ‘figured’ because, due to the difference of the deferred moments in the film, the characters go about marking different levels of representation that can be read as a figuration of their time on the field. Derrida’s out of joint, here quoting Hamlet in Spectres, concerns the film’s aspects of the ‘noted,’ the ‘represented’ and the ‘figured’ (Derrida Of Grammatology 52) that correlates with the characters perceived ghostliness and their provenance. But it is a much thicker mix of arrival and timeliness that is out of joint (Derrida Spectres 49). So what makes this film a hauntology? Where are these characters’ voices emerging from and how these voices tie together? Upon the first viewing this film simply seems to be a jumbled lexicon of camera angles, strobe light effects intending to replicate mushroom induced hallucinations. Cutler, Friend, Jacob and Whitehead need not ask questions verbally for us, the viewer, to hear for they exist already in this interrogated space: the field. It could be stated that the characters’ lack of questioning lie in the fact that interrogated space is haunted space (Wigley 201) and that the structure of the crypt, later to be seen as the pit in which they dig for treasure, is built into the structure of space - the field. Friend asks questions of his life’s meaning but ultimately rests his decision that God’s plan is unquestionable. However, despite these agonising questions the characters remain relatively un-inquisitive. But constructively, or rather de-constructively, they move about not only within the field, in search of treasure, but also outside of it by haunted means of the conjuring (Derrida Spectres 49). Physically these characters are bound to a singular point in time and space the film is set during a battle and it is filmed entirely on a field. But what is its trace as the characters are concerned? In the entire field, the field as physical space and the field as narrative, the being-present starts from an occulted movement of trace. as ‘non-living’ up to ‘consciousness,’ passing through all levels of animal organisation’ (Derrida Of Grammatology 47). What, in the film, makes up the living world of the characters? Why do the aggressions that arise so fervently towards each other dissipate seconds later without question or remembrance? Why should the characters have narrative but not history? According to Derrida the being ‘is announced as such. The film questions the evil of the haunted and, by imposing this position upon the viewer, influences and modifies the meaning of the plot and its repetitive nature (Derrida Of Grammatology 41). Like a science fiction film set in the future we, the viewer, are left to put the historical puzzle pieces together. The viewer is the one out of joint in the film, time travellers to this field in the past. The characters’ actions and reasoning are not explained because, in their point of view, they are not out of joint. The viewer is dropped, without context, into the film’s eponymous field. They are then forced to search for treasure by the Irishman O’Neil until the deserters rage a war of their own against him. Their actions begin to be marked by disputes and fatigue fuelled by the effects of hallucinatory mushrooms, having been fed to them by Cutler, to make them more manageable to his demands. A Field in England is set in a monochromatic field at the fringes of a battle during the English Civil War, following a group of deserters (Whitehead, Cutler, Friend and Jacob) who walk, almost aimlessly, through a field in rural England after having met during a noisy battle. ‘The frothing of the hedges I keep deep inside me.’ Jean Wahl (Poème)Ī slasher-cum-hallucination-cum-haunted period drama, Ben Wheatley’s 2013 film pits ghosts against time, spectre against conjured and voices against narrative. The Haunted Voice and Spherical Narrative of Ben Wheatley’s A Field in England Issue 4:The Haunted Voice and Spherical Narrative of Ben Wheatley’s A Field in England
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