I suppose you could consider this review a delayed follow-up to the Vigil one. As I said back then, I wanted to take a break before I tried to tackle another Ward film, just in case it would be too similar and burn me out. Well, I can certainly say that his next film wasn’t quite the same as his first, and in fact, I’m still not quite sure what to make of it. In some ways, it was still an interesting film to watch, but on the whole, it seemed like it might’ve been overreaching, and ended up over-complicating itself in the pursuit of vision and meaning. We’ll get more into it later, as we always do, but let’s start with the story.
During the Dark Ages, and more specifically the Black Plague, a small village in Cumbria (a county in Northern England) is gripped with fear over the possibility of the plague hitting them. At the same time, a young boy, Griffin, has been having visions of a church on the other side of the world. It seems as though the visions are telling him that they must journey to the church and erect a spike on the spire before dawn in order for the Death to pass over the village. Connor, the explorer who has recently returned to the village, decides to form a group and carry out this task, and take Griffin along with them as well. They use an old drill/battering device to dig through a cavern nearby and make it all the way to the other side. This “other side” turns out to be modern day New Zealand, though the group only seem to semi-acknowledge the changes between their time and this. After losing one of the crew, who can’t make it across a highway, and Connor going off on his own, they come across some metalworkers, a.k.a. “blacksmiths,” and ask them to forge the spike from some copper they’ve taken with them along the journey. The blacksmiths are reluctant at first, since their factory is being shut down, but they decide to help out anyway. After that, the group have to cross the harbor, so they use a rowboat and take a horse with them that they stole from someone. Meanwhile, Connor ends up in a junkyard, and while trying to escape, gets stuck on the front of an Amtrak/Bart/subway-esque train, like a bug on a windshield. While all this is happening, Griffin is getting more visions about the church, and seems to see someone falling from a ladder while putting the spike on the spire. As they get closer and closer, Griffin comes to realize who is meant to fall, and is ever more desperate to make it to the church before they do. I’ll leave the outcome for you to see, as I always do.
So, the thing about this movie is that there was clearly an attempt made to create an artistic vision. A lot of the imagery created within is very memorable: the shot of a torch falling down the crevasse in slow motion, lighting up the darkness as it falls; the zoom in on a winged skeleton with a brass horn flying through the sky, seen through a hole in the cave during their dig; the black and white look of the village scenes, especially when the light off the peoples’ skin is contrasting with the surrounding shadows, almost looking Ingmar Bergman-esque at times; the high-speed ride Connor takes on the train, which looks like something out of a Sam Raimi movie; and much of Griffin’s vision, including the church with a cloudy blue-purple sky, a cross-necklace underneath water, a P.O.V. shot of someone running up the church’s spiral stairs with the aforementioned blue-purple look, etc. All of this was very engrossing on a visual level, and while somewhat of its time (that blue-purple look does give off a late 80s-early 90s feel), I still found it to be very cool and even beautiful. However, I think the film runs into trouble in terms of execution on its ideas and vibe. It feels like the film is trying to have a weighted sense of gravitas while also being quirky and weird. The best way I can put it is that it almost feels like an earlier Terry Gilliam film, but one which takes itself too seriously for what it is. A film like Brazil deals with real-world ideas of bureaucracy and feeling trapped within the societal structure, and there is clearly a darkness to the overall piece, but it presents all of these things with a sense of satire and black comedy that the oddball delivery can support, while still allowing the film to acknowledge the actual tragedy and uncomfortable nature of what’s really going on. In addition, when Gilliam wanted to get more outwardly serious with The Fisher King but still wanted to use some of those more outlandish elements, he kept the weirder stuff more in the background, or only had it show up when it was needed. The Navigator, by contrast, seems to want to have weighted drama, what with Griffin’s turmoil about his vision and the potential death of one of their own, while also dealing with oddball scenarios, like the aforementioned train ride, and some rather caricatured performances from the main cast. From the very start of the film, you get the sense that the actors are all playing their roles in a not-entirely-realistic way. It’s not quite theater acting, but it’s something along those lines. Again, not too unlike early Gilliam, or even family films in general sometimes. This seems to clash with the grimmer and more realistic setting/scenario that these people are in, that being a Northern England village during the Black Death, and we seem to lose a certain connection to the characters and their story as a result. We’re left thinking “what is this film going for” as opposed to being drawn in. In fact, the only thing drawing us in is the potential for a more meaningful outcome, as promised by the vision sequences, and the morbid curiosity just to see what the heck this film is going for. When we get to the modern New Zealand city, the group doesn’t seem to question things in the way that most real people would. While they are clearly out of their element, they never ask what these things driving across the road are, why these “blacksmiths” have these huge facilities to work in with machines they’ve never seen before, what cranes and trains even are, or even what a TV is. It almost comes across like a child playing pretend, like they’re trying to work what they see in reality into the fantasy (as in, a crane could be a dragon or something along those lines). However, even this doesn’t entirely work, since none of the modern people they meet seem to really question their worldview, or even who they are and what they’re doing. It just seems like everything goes along as if they weren’t even in the modern day. Now, this could also be the intent, as it might be going for a “representing a fantastical journey through a mundane context” sort of thing as well, but even so, it just never feels like the whole presentation comes together well enough to really make this film work. It really just seems like the film didn’t know what it wanted to be, or that it just didn’t execute what it was trying to do very well. Now, some of the off-kilter nature of this film might be explainable, considering how it ends (though it’s the sort of thing that can really feel like a cop-out in most cases), but the film was already oddly delivered even before we went on the journey, so I don’t think it really changes anything. Honestly, I really wanted this film to work. I could tell that there was passion and interest that went into its creation, but I was ultimately disappointed by how it turned out. It’s interesting to compare this to Ward’s previous film, Vigil. That film seemed like it wanted to suggest something more, but ultimately amounted to a mostly typical indie work, whereas this film also wanted to create something more, but lost itself in trying to do so. I can only hope that, somewhere in his career, Ward found that right balance on one of his projects, but I’m not sure if I’m going to look into his work further or not. For now, I think it’s time we wrap this session up.
So, sadly, The Navigator felt like a case of unrealized potential and disjointed film-making. It was still an interesting viewing experience, and I’m glad I checked it out, it just didn’t turn out quite as well as I’d hoped. I won’t tell you not to see it, it’s not really a bad film, I’m just not going to give it a high recommendation. Basically, check it out if any of this sounds interesting to you, but I won’t promise you that you’ll get a fully realized experience out of it. But just because a film doesn’t entirely work, it doesn’t mean you can’t find things to like about it, so if you’re up for it, take a journey with The Navigator. It might be an awkward adventure, but I’m sure you’ll encounter things that you can take home with you (oh, and watch out for plagues, which is sadly good advice in this day and age).