WINSTANLEY

On April 1, 1649, a British religious sect called the Diggers sets out to form a commune and till the soil on “common” land - which by law permits grazing, but not settlement or cultivation. Led by Gerard Winstanley, theirs is a nonviolent action to reclaim land for the poor who had been dispossessed by Oliver Cromwell’s recent Civil War. But the local villagers see the Diggers’ “occupation” as a threat to their livelihood and, led by a Presbyterian parson, take action to harass and burn them out.

Kevin Brownlow’s activities as a hugely influential film historian have tended to erase both memory and recognition of the two extraordinary features he made in collaboration with Andrew Mollo. In this adaptation of David Caute’s historical novel Comrade Jacob, the two directors decorate the story of England’s first commune with unromantic details of Cromwell’s era, and edit the film with the emphasis one expects from silent film expert Brownlow.

Employing more real-life activists than professional actors, the film includes Sid Rawle of “The New Diggers” (otherwise known as the recipient of an island from John Lennon, which supported a short-lived but successful commune). “We made the film to see if it is possible to make an absolutely authentic historical film,” says Brownlow, “Even the animals came from rare breeds, and the armor for the battle scene came from the Tower of London.”

WINSTANLEY is as close to the seventeenth century as cinema gets, and it is a study of a heroic attempt to improve the lives of people. As Winstanley wrote in his pamphlets, and as he says in the film: “Was the earth made to preserve a few covetous, proud men to live at ease, and for them to bag and barn up the treasures of the Earth from others, that these may beg or starve in a fruitful land; or was it made to preserve all her children?”

“There’s really not much to be said for WINSTANLEY, except that it’s the most mysteriously beautiful English film since the best of Michael Powell (which it resembles in no other respect) and the best pre-twentieth-century historical film I can recall since THE RISE OF LOUIS XIV [Rossellini] or Straub-Huillet’s Bach film [CHRONICLE OF ANNA MAGDALENA BACH]. I know that sounds like hyperbole, but I can’t help it. Mysteriously beautiful films which tell one something about the past are rare commodities, and one certainly doesn’t expect to find anything as idiosyncratic as this one in the English cinema. Like BARRY LYNDON, it is s-f about the past where a vanished era becomes the focus of the same sort of curiosity, awe and wonder commonly reserved for the future. It refuses to pander to simplistic demands for ‘contemporary relevance’ (rather than let this emerge naturally from the material), betraying a respect for the audience that is all but anachronistic.” - Jonathan Rosenbaum