George Mackay in the mysterious time travel drama

A ghostly story that is not exactly a ghost story, Nevada rose It is a typically imaginative film by director Mark Jenkin. But here he has recognizable actors and a much more pronounced narrative than in his last feature film, the completely enigmatic Ins men (2022). That does not mean that the plot is direct. He returns to himself more than once, and this is essentially a film of existential questions wrapped in elegant images and a haunted atmosphere.

It is also a mysterious travel film that benefits greatly from its convincing and realistic performance by George Mackay (1917 and The beast). Anchor the movie actually as Nick, a place whose fishing village in Cornwall is falling apart. He gets edible from a food bank and the roof is dripping on his wife and little daughter. Callum Turner (The boys in the boat) is Liam, a stranger who goes to that city, without a place to sleep or money.

And on the shore, a small fishing boat called La Rosa de Nevada that was lost in the sea 30 years before has floated back. Two men disappeared along with him. One was Tina’s husband (Rosalind Eleazar), the mother of two adult daughters without remembering her father. The other was the son of Nick’s neighbors, the Richards (Mary Woodvine and Adrian Rawlins). Mrs. Richards, aged and confused, insists that Nick “my son returns home.” Its devastated appearance, with long white hair, and its pronouncement as a seer is a carefully placed track that there will be supernatural touches ahead. (Jenkin himself seems tormented by lost fishermen, which appear in each of his three features so far).

From the beginning, Jenkin combines his typical imagist style with the story of Nick and Liam, who go out with the pattern of the boat recovered as fishermen. The film opens with a series of shots made to seem that they are in an old scratched film, with first planes of rusty chains and broken wood, which we realize later is the old rotting boat.

But where Ins men – The story of a single woman on an island that sees visions of previous centuries – It is a series of scenes without much impulse forward, Nevada rose It has convincing suspense elements. When Nick goes to the sea, he finds a warning carved on the wall of his bunk: salt from the boat now. And when they return to the coast, Nick and Liam are found in 1993. The city seems to be flourishing, with the bar once discussed now full of people and full of life. The food bank that Nick visited is a post office. If men are lost in the past forever or can return to the present, going out to sea again is the question they will have to try.

Mackay gives Nick a haunted look from the beginning, it is not surprising that a man fights to feed his family. The time transfer suggests retrospectively that there may be more behind that expression, but the performance is especially moving because Mackay never winks to any other possibility in the previous scenes. Nick’s confusion when he lands in the past is painful, and also his desperate desire to return with his wife and daughter. Turner has less to work as the stranger whose history we do not know, and too frequently Liam seems blank, but the character becomes more intriguing in the 1993 scenes. Eleazar is soft in both frames of time, in a performance that keeps us intelligently guessing how much he knows or wants to know tub.

A photograph of the two men who lost is a recurring image, sometimes a real photo in the houses today, sometimes simply on the screen. What really happened to them? Nick wakes up from dreams, which can be memories. Ambiguity is deliberate as the film raises identity questions and family connections.

Although Jenkin’s style to focus on images instead of history is reduced, it is still prominent, and sometimes an uncomfortable adjustment with narration. There are too many fish shots that are dragged, they are destroyed and only look at us from an ice bed. But the style itself is impressive. Jenkin is almost a single man team, as a writer, director, director of photography and editor. He also designed the sound, an important element here, with blows and ticing and a disconcerting note of music that has just been in the air. Like the appearance of Mrs. Richards, the sound landscape adds a supernatural dye without enjoying terror tropes. And the images themselves, as the bright and bold color of the boat in the sea, are elegant compositions even when they do not combine well enough with the narrative.

Jenkin has said in the statement of a director that his film is concerned about “personal sacrifice, the power of the community and what it means to be part of society today.” These issues are not always registered, but that should not matter because their eloquent art always invites interpretation.