From the Sea: Ill Fares The Land in Seventeen Frames

Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,

— Oliver Goldsmith, The Deserted Village, 1770, line 51. The poem gives the film its title.

The first line of Goldsmith opens on the sea. It announces a harm that is coming, like the waves. The land it speaks of is not yet in sight.

She comes from below, where there is no shore.

The only moment we see her in her own element, free. Where she comes from there are no shores and no borders.

The sea brings in what it cannot keep.

The crossing. The sea carries to the shore what it does not hold, and whoever comes from the sea arrives like this, set down on a coast they did not choose.

A shore built by the sea, and still moving.

The landscape before the characters: a land made by the sea, unstable. The figure is so small it can hardly be seen, like someone who arrives and goes unnoticed.

The road between home and the water.

The boy enters. He is on the road that joins the two worlds of the film: home, with its violence, and the sea.

Between them, only stones.

The first look. Between them there is only distance and stone. The whole film plays out in that empty space: whether to come closer or not.

On the shingle, the impossible lies still.

The encounter with the impossible. She lies motionless, out of her element, exposed. The lighthouse, which should guide those who come from the sea, stays in the background.

A hand that touches before it judges.

The gesture that sets George apart from everyone else: he touches before he judges. It is the first of the hands in this sequence, and it prepares the last.

Looking up at a sky that is not hers.

Her point of view. Wounded, on the ground, she looks at a sky that does not belong to her. It is the condition of the stranger, told without naming it.

Awake in the dark, a hand on his shoulder.

The pain brought home, on his face. Whose hand it is stays uncertain, and rightly so: in this film, hands can wound and hands can save.

The last thing he sees before sleep.

The mermaid enters his room. The toy lighthouse echoes the real one on the shore. From here the question begins: was the mermaid a dream? Is she George?

Where wealth accumulates, and men decay.

— Oliver Goldsmith, The Deserted Village, 1770, line 52.

The second line of Goldsmith opens the land, as the first opened the sea. Here men decay, and the flag is what anger gathers behind.

Headlines on the walls, a camera waiting.

The language of the media that feeds the hatred, and a camera waiting to record. Hatred is also built as an image to be shown.

Belonging, found in the dark.

The older brother, split between light and shadow. He has found a place to belong, in the dark. The film keeps him open until the end.

Who are the people who come from the sea? Pain.

George's question and Trey's answer, the only exchange in the sequence. After the flag and the hatred, a single word holds together those who come from the sea and those who push them back. It is the hinge that leads back to the water.

Beneath the surface, the world he came from.

George returns to the water, as the mermaid was in the water at the beginning. The line leaves the reading open: perhaps he comes from there, perhaps he is trying to go back.

And a hand, reaching down.

His brother's hand reaching down to bring him back. It is the last hand of the sequence, and it answers the touch on the shore: the trajectory ends on a gesture of rescue, another way out.