Screen:
O'Brien, Tom
THE MINERS OF CUMBRIA WARD'S 'NAVIGATOR' he Navigator: An Odyssey Across Time, winner of six Australian Oscars, is surely the strangest film released in years. An odd but moving blend of fantasy...
...There have been plenty of recent "dark ages" fantasies comparing the Middle Ages with the present: Conan the Barbarian, Dragonslayer, Ladyhawke, etc...
...one suggested link is plague, bubonic or AIDS...
...Director Ward shoots the steel Leviathan for every bit of stark, suggestive menace he can...
...Griffin declares at its lights, one of many wonderful bits of naivete with hidden truth...
...they come up at night in Auckland, New Zealand...
...feed it the horse," they shout, not understanding the nature of a submarine...
...These people live in an enclosed world, with only a dim sense of a larger outer one...
...Provocative contrast is implicit in the moving, often expressionist cinematography: black and white for way-back-when...
...Or perhaps understanding too well: recall the film's origins in a country that has banned warships with nuclear weapons...
...Equal to its sense of relevance is the movie's respect for the Middle Ages, especially for medieval man's sense of community as a defense against human frailty...
...At Griffin's prodding, four men burrow under their mines (in "a journey to the center of the earth...
...On a higher level, Barbara Tuchman found fourteenth-century parallels to the present in A Distant Mirror...
...Unaware of where they are, Griffin, Connor, and their comrades search for a blacksmith...
...Between him and the church they seek ("look for the tallest building," they tell themselves) lie many a danger: modern traffic, noise, speed...
...In a grim, medieval mining area in Cumbria, villagers fear the coming of plague...
...The Navigator gets away with this magic-as does Field of Dreams-by providing no explanation at all...
...They are guided by Connor's young brother, Griffin (Hamish MacFarlane) who has dreamed of this as their only way out: he is their "seer," regarded both comically and reverentially by older men who tease him affectionately and fear his power...
...one miner has too goofy a face, resembling a hayseed village idiot in a Monty Python skit-The Navigator is a strong, bold movie, with the courage to make us laugh, think, fear, and feel at once...
...Even with its uneven moments-the plot supplies too many occasions for wondering just what's going to happen next...
...color now...
...To be sure, The Navigator links the Middle Ages and the present with several key images, especially involving the Apocalypse...
...The film has elements of a meditation about time and the inescapability of different forms of good and evil in all historical periods...
...But the middle is rock solid, detailing how the villagers, driven by their sense of peril, undertake an adventure to place a cross on a church steeple "at the far end of the world" in the belief such an "offering" will save them...
...Connor gets trapped on a terrifying ride on the front of a train...
...God's city...
...TOM O'BRIEN...
...they find a steelworker, who mistakes them in their bizarre hoods for "Hare Krishnas" and goes about forging them a cross...
...they fight off refugees "from the east" (meaning east of their corner of Northwest England) to prevent any contagion...
...Director Vincent Ward, who also wrote the screenplay (with Kelly Lyuons and Geoffrey Chappie), plays a bit too much with the texture of his film, alternating between dreams and fact, visionary and realistic modes...
...In one magnificent scene, crossing Auckland harbor in a boat with a white horse they've stolen, the time travelers are confronted by a terrible sea beast...
...only one of their menfolk, Connor (Bruce Lyons), has any broad experience of the world beyond...
...the playfulness provides for a surprise near the end, gimmicky but still poignant...
...An odd but moving blend of fantasy and spirituality, it is one of those rare films genuinely "not to be missed" (the last was, perhaps, The Last Emperor...
...The Navigator adds something rarer: contrast...
...the film's Celtic score seemed a little prefab-eerie...
Vol. 116 • August 1989 • No. 14
