BODKIN RAS is a Western at heart. Semi-nomadic wanderer, Bodkin Ras (actor Sohrab Bayat), is an Iranian Dutchman on the run. He rides into a small frontier town to lay low awhile. Forres is a harsh wilderness town in North East Scotland.
Bodkin’s fictional drama unfolds and is interwoven into the documentary narratives of real people, non-actors, living in Forres who interact with him. The bleak, small town he stumbles into has within it a community of characters bonded by the deep melancholy and philosophical poetry of the hard drinker. The result is a film that is in turns touching, harsh and violent, interspersed with brief moments of tenderness that when past, only increase the enduring sense of profound loneliness. It is a poem to Forres. A meditation on drinking. It is most of all a film about humanity.
The technique of narrating the fictional story of Bodkin Ras through James the Red (a local hard nut), set against the personal real stories of several of his clan in the pub, The Eagle, creates a distance for us to view the fictional character of Bodkin as if he is an old character in an old fairytale that re-enters the imaginations of these people. We view him through their eyes, accept and judge him only through James’ observational philosophy, even as shadows cast darkness over the drama as we watch what has come to pass.
Bodkin Ras integrates into the community and meets Lily (Lily Szramko), a seemingly posh London young girl trapped in Forres by lack of opportunity. But their developing relationship and script appear more wooden and inauthentic the more we fall for the real-life rogues and battered old geezers who have been broken and spat out by the world.
We warm instantly to these non-actors. The film offers witness without judgment to this bunch of native regulars in a hard drinking boozer. The Eagle is a pub filled with outcasts. The documentary camera enters their lives without intrusion, and listens to their untold stories. We are offered an oral history account of why Eddie Paton and his friends seek solace in hard spirits. Why a collective of outlaws and miscreants and misfits find friendship and sweetness in their stronghold, the pub.
…documentary and fictional worlds colliding effortlessly…
In Eddie Paton, I was reminded of the novel by Scottish Makar, Ron Butlin, The Sound of my Voice: a powerful novel about a professional alcoholic. Eddie leads a “normal” life but his heart is wracked with grief. In Bodkin’s character I also thought of a Turkish film I once loved, KOSMOS (2010), about an otherworldly man who comes to a village on winds of chaos and magic: destructive and transformative. But Bodkin is far from a magical being. He is made of the same twisted metal as the men in The Eagle, and they accept him for this.
The fictional story is narrated in a voice-over by James the Red. It is observational, poetic and philosophical. As if as an Elder of his community, he tells the old stories. It is all past, the deeds are done. Human nature persists. The action only catches up with the voice-over at the end.
The cinematography and composition match the documentary feel. Sometimes a wobbly hand cam, sometimes a static head shot. The intimacy of the non-actors speaking into the camera, allowing it into their lives, generates genuine empathy for both their life and that of the fictional characters. The distinction is blurred, the documentary and fictional worlds colliding effortlessly.
A Dutch-Iranian man is bound to stick out in a small Scottish community, but what is sad about Bodkin is that the ragtags he falls in with take him at face value and accept him. He could stay, and honour their outlaw codes of morality and friendship, but his anger against the world turns him against them. Although the story is a Western in spirit, there is no revenge or redemption for Bodkin Ras at the end, no shootout. He is a perpetual character of rage and darkness that lives on in the world.
The energy and the mystery of this film build as the documentary characters become more vulnerable, opening up to Bodkin and to us, the documentary film audience. Bodkin is a troubled soul fighting demons, the confusion and humanity that temper his flaws all captured by James the Red’s monologue, and witnessed in Eddie’s tragedy. This is a town of real people, and their individual struggles echo a timeless ode to Forres, and the tragedies real people quietly endure.
Those who believe ours is more than a black and white world, and likewise in film genre, should watch this melted fiction and documentary with interest.
‘Love those that hate us?’
It is hard to change our ways when so little is expected of us. This film pushes the boundary of expectation.
To Eddie, Pat, Hitler, Sean, Al, John, and the poet James et al., here’s to you.
httpvh://youtu.be/C9ZjGN6vfwg