Athina Rachel Tsangari’s new film Harvest focuses on a farming villages’ citizens, Walter Thirsk (Caleb Landry Jones). He narrates that the village is ‘suspicious of anyone who’s not born with local soil under their fingernails’. He’s not like the other farming residents because of his friendship with the farm’s noble lord Master Kent (Harry Melling). He also enjoys the company of a widowed woman, Kitty Goose (Rosy McEwen) and a cartographer, Quill (Arzene Kine). He just assumes that Quill works for Kent but the former actually works for the farm’s real heir. That is Master Jordan (Frank Dillane), who uses Quill’s map to figure out how to expel the farmers.

While watching this film, one probably realizes how it’s a metaphor of how life was before modernity. One should also give credit to how this isn’t just a nostalgia trip, looking at the past in a positive way. After all, the town did just punish three of its citizens, the women cutting off most of a woman’s hair. But at least the film balances those scenes out by giving itself some breathing room with vibing scenes. There are closeups of Quill’s instruments as he creates another one of his beautiful maps for Kent. Harvest also captures Walter and Quill’s budding friendship without them knowing what happens next.

In Harvest, Tsangari shows the perpetual coexistence of cruelty and kindness. Repeat viewings should make us suspect that Jordan is an inevitability but his presence is still jarring. It goes without saying that the performances are great here, with Jones fitting in with a cast with mostly British people. At first he does seem clueless, but most people are when they face a change that threatens everyone’s lives. The same goes with Dillane, showing that there’s more to being a villain than just putting on a Posh British accent. Tsangari also highlights their contrasts visually, consistently tactile and earthy until Jordan comes in with dyed clothing.

A part of me is trying to take out my biases while watching something like Harvest, as I tell myself not to let the film fool me with Baroque-esque visuals of Walter and Kent’s anguish. The other part of me says that maybe the town should just violently rid its grounds of Jordan. But it’s easier to say things that do them, just like it’s easier for Jordan to be nicer. Perhaps the cruelty is the point of this film, just like it is in the real world. Tsangari, a member of the Greek Weird Wave, retells a fable that, credit to her, reflects today’s hell.

Harvest is available to stream on MUBI, which gets-