Enys Men (pronounced "ennis maine") is Cornish for "Stone Island." It is also one of the strangest but also most fascinating movies I've seen this year. Earlier in the year many people went nuts for Skinamarink, and experimental horror that I just failed to connect with. This has some similarities but offers a lot that worked for me more and this is one of my favourites of the year so far.
The film, written/directed/edited/composed/shot by Mark Jenkin, is set on an isolated island off the Cornish coast where a wildlife volunteer, played brilliantly by Mary Woodvine, makes daily observations of a wild flower, finding herself in some sort of nightmare as she does so.
This is the kind of film that will probably piss you off if you're someone who needs answers, and while I'm not sure this offers a puzzle I'll figure out over time like some of Charlie Kaufman's work I'm not sure I need to. Mark Jenkin captures such a rich atmosphere that the lack of understanding is completely forgivable in my opinion. It offers what seems to be several strands of time colliding and playing out at once, and while I don't know what it wants to say or what the point of it all is it seems to shoot for a kind of disorientation that comes through isolation, although I could be completely missing the mark.
It truly is the atmosphere though that makes this worth a watch. Jenkin shot it on a 16mm camera from the 70s, alongside post-sync sound that makes this feel just like it was plucked out of the Wicker Man era. Not only does Jenkin use the older technology to put us in this place in time, but its limitations force Jenkin into a lot of very creative editing. If the guy that introduced the film is right the reels of film for this camera are very small so there aren't many lengthy shots, but the at times rapid editing Jenkin employs works well to disorient.
The film is also just stunning to look at. While it operates as a strange and fairly unexplainable folk horror it also does feel like a love letter to this area, as the cinematography is constantly capturing gorgeous landscapes and nature, with some magnificent framing throughout.
I won't try to act like I understand this one, and truth be told I don't know if I ever will. It's haunting comes through the lack of understanding as these images from seeming different points of time unfold simultaneously. That haunting atmosphere mixed with the sheer beauty captured on screen make this one of the most confusing but cinematically exciting films I've seen recently.
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