Mark Jenkin, a Cornish purveyor of celluloid art, has been shooting his films exclusively on 16mm film on Bolex camera, now comes up with time traveling, seafaring film with great efficiency and intrigue with two big movie stars, George MacKay and Callum Turner, as a couple of hired fishermen off the Coastline where Jenkin comes from.
Rose of Nevada, a small fishing boat that disappeared 30 years ago, returns to the harbor. The declining fishing community is still reeling from the loss of Alan, the fisherman who set out to sea on that boat, and Luke, whose guilt of not accompanying Alan that day drove him to suicide. The boat's owner/businessman Mike recruits young family man Nick (MacKay), who happens to be the next door neighbor of Luke's grieving parents and Liam (Turner), an interloper who needs a job. The boat is steered by a seasoned, mysterious snarling seaman Murgey (Francis Magee), who might or might be the connection between the past and present.
After a successful haul, Nick and Liam return home and find themselves to be regarded as Alan and Luke by the townsfolk thirty years earlier. The Richards - Luke's parents, think their son is having some sort of mental breakdown from stress and Alan's fidgetty wife regards, he is having one of those moody episodes. As they go on another fishing trip and things remain stuck in the past, Nike is having a hard time accepting a new reality than Liam, who slowly embraces his role as Alan, a family man with wife and daughter.
Nick refuses to go on board for yet another fishing expedition because he can't go on without seeing his wife and young daughter because like himself, they are not born yet in 1993. He contemplates suicide by jumping off the cliffs, like Luke did, thus, completing Terminator/Twelve Monkeys like self-fulfilling profecy. But he thinks better of it. He accepts fate and joins the Richards as Luke.
Featuring working class characters and their circumstances that Jenkin is familiar with growing up, he beautifully crafts a sort of low-fi sci-fi with sodden social realism with Rose of Nevada. The details of the fishing village is vividly captured in glorious 16mm with vibrant colors, blemishes and grains. I gotta check out Jenkin's other films now.
