Rose of Nevada
George MacKay and Callum Turner play a pair of time-travelling fishermen in Mark Jenkin’s cryptic, challenging mystery-drama.
Callum Turner and George MacKay
Image courtesy of British Film Institute.
by MANSEL STIMPSON
Rose of Nevada is the latest work from Mark Jenkin who came to prominence with his 2019 feature Bait. He is one of those rare figures who can truly be regarded as multitalented since that film and its successors find him credited as director, writer, photographer, editor and composer. Functioning in all these ways makes it unsurprising that he comes across as an artist in the deepest sense, somebody who creates works which, as with a painter, are fully expressive in a totally personal way. This marks him out as an exceptional figure but his career as a filmmaker is also notable for two most unusual features. First, there is the fact that, having been born in Newlyn in 1976 and having devoted himself to making films in Cornwall that are rooted in local life and history, he has become a British director identified with that part of the country where he was born and which is central to his art. In this respect it is striking that he should be a descendant of Alfred Wallis (1855–1942) a Cornishman who was a fisherman and sailor and who at the age of seventy became a painter and did so with no artistic training while creating his own style uninfluenced by others. Secondly, the fact that Bait in addition to receiving critical acclaim and no less than nine awards was a significantly popular BFI release was not something that one could have anticipated. After all Jenkin’s films are decidedly idiosyncratic in a way that brings them close to the avant-garde or to experimental cinema. Arresting as they are, they contain passages that are mysterious and obscure and that makes them demanding and challenging works.
Those characteristics, immediately apparent in Bait, were also present in Enys Men (2022) and feature once again in Rose of Nevada although, despite the personal signature, the three films are quite distinct in character. Thus, Bait, a film about gentrification and change, was crucially conceived as a film photographed in black-and-white and at times it echoed both silent cinema and traditional documentaries. Enys Men shot in colour was centred on a female ecologist alone on a rocky island and it came across as a poetic meditation on time, life and aging. Now, with Rose of Nevada, the concern with time and change reappears but in a completely different form. It occurs when its two central characters experience a weird form of time travel after boarding the fishing vessel Rose of Nevada. Needless to say, we are again in Cornwall and some of the players are Jenkin regulars, notably Edward Rowe and Jenkin’s partner Mary Woodvine. However, this time around there is a major change in that the two leading roles are taken by established star players, namely George MacKay and Callum Turner. It is very much to their credit that, having elected to work for Jenkin, they both give themselves over completely to his vision and fit perfectly naturally into his world. For that matter this is also the case when it comes to the contribution of the veteran actor Francis Magee who is ideal in the film’s other most substantial role.
Despite the fact that I find Rose of Nevada the least satisfying of these three features for reasons which I will explain, it is nevertheless yet further confirmation of Jenkin’s remarkable cinematic skill, a work in which his individuality is more assured and confident than ever. Those who admired Bait and Enys Men will not want to miss this new work but, if some come to it unaware of his style but lured in by the presence of MacKay and Turner and possibly by the misleading description of it as a piece of folk-horror (a phrase also used inappropriately regarding Enys Men), they may well be taken aback. The story told is indeed of a supernatural nature and that is often commercially appealing, but Jenkin’s approach converts it into something so much more individual that, like it or not, it is defiantly offbeat.
Rose of Nevada begins in 2023 at a time when the coastal town in which it is located has become a shadow of its former self and times are harsh. Unexpectedly the titular fishing boat returns and that is decidedly mysterious since the boat was thought to have been lost at sea thirty years earlier. There is a skipper (Magee’s role) prepared to take it out again and encouraged to do so by a local businessman (Rowe) and by a widow named Tina (Rosalind Eleazar). To go forth it needs two crew members and a stranger to the town, Liam (Turner), a man without commitments, is ready to sign up. Nick Dyer (MacKay) is in contrast a local man with a wife (Mae Voogd) and with a daughter too and he would not normally want to volunteer to go to sea. But, with his house in need of repair, the chance to earn leads to his signing on for two days of fishing. The community is realistically portrayed but there are already disquieting elements beyond the boat’s sudden reappearance: an old woman (Woodvine) declares that the boat was indeed lost and on the vessel itself we see cut into the wood a warning to get off it.
However, the key development is the realisation that when Nick and Liam get back they find themselves in the town as it was in 1993 and with the inhabitants now treating them as Luke and Alan who were the original crew. Nick, longing to be reunited with his wife and child, resists the idea that he is Luke to the dismay of Luke’s parents. But Liam is ready to take on the identity of Alan, husband of Tina, which will bring him into her bed and make him a family man with children. The situation thus set up is one that invites a number of possible interpretations. The life in the earlier period is one which in 2023 may represent the good old days, but it finds the fishermen taking risks as they conform to what the community expects of them and, even as Liam as Alan settles into the domesticity he had previously spurned, it is Nick who through his loss has now become rudderless. In a sense individuality has been replaced by community roles recognised by society with Liam becoming a husband and Nick a son. But these are random ideas, thoughts provoked rather than something that is posited by the film. In the past Jenkin's special talent has encouraged one to give minimum weight to the more obscure passages in his films but that talent is now a known factor so it is harder for it to outweigh shortcomings. That is so even though the colour images, once again obtained using a 16mm Bolex camera, are quite superb. Most crucial of all is the fact that at 114 minutes Rose of Nevada is considerably longer than its two predecessors and that in consequence its story cries out for a conclusion that helps to define its themes in a clear way. Instead of that, the intent of the piece remains overly cryptic and that disappoints. Nevertheless, it is undeniable that this is the work of a major cinema artist.
Cast: George MacKay, Callum Turner, Francis Magee, Mary Woodvine, Edward Rowe, Rosalind Eleazar, Adrian Rawlins, Mae Voogd, Yana Penrose, Aria Ballah-Quinn, Emily Dalglish-Lane, Tori Cannell.
Dir Mark Jenkin, Pro Denzil Monk, Screenplay Mark Jenkin, Ph Mark Jenkin, Pro Des Felicity Hickson, Ed Mark Jenkin, Music Mark Jenkin, Costumes Jo Thompson.
BFI Films/Bosena/Film4 Productions/Head Gear Films/Metrol Technology-British Film Institute.
114 mins. UK. 2025. UK Rel: 24 April 2026. US Rel: 19 June 2026. Cert. 15.
