What’s your favourite apocalyptic dystopia? There are too many to choose from, these days. Danny Boyle’s bloodlust in London; Bethesda’s raygun gothic humour; Hoban’s Riddley Walker or Kirkman’s Walker-riddled Virginia.
And what counts as “apocalyptic”? The word comes from the Greek apokalýptikos, meaning “to uncover or disclose”. It’s a super apt word to use for Stephen Fingleton’s sci-fi THE SURVIVALIST, which looks at the way a semi-feral member of society might appear, desperate circumstances having forced them to disclose and uncover their true nature. Here, the apocalypse acts as a great equaliser. Not the usual setting: no crumbling concrete or rotten pile-ups, just a shack and vegetable garden, quivering with green shoots, in the middle of a forest. It’s a poignant little oasis of civilisation, like Bill Masen’s farm in The Day Of The Triffids. Some domestic habits haven’t changed for the occupant of the shack: the wiry Survivalist (Martin McCann) scrubs himself pale as a potato every morning, and keeps his bedding clean and decent. His gardening tools and books are all ranked and filed, his hair neatly twisted into studenty semi-dreads. Is he ex-military? Did The Troubles prepare him for this new world?
After fifteen wordless minutes acclimatising to the Survivalist’s self-sufficient homestead, we witness a trespassing. Fingleton pays homage to Rembrandt via Tarkovsky, in form and figure: the grrl with the prrl earring and a handsome Stalker approach like doubtful guests through the little allotment. The Survivalist allows Milja (Mia Goth) and her mother Kathryn (Olwen Fouéré) to step into the sooty darkness of his sanctuary, where the scant gloaming picks out traces of civilisation: the shining lip of a jar, the foxed spine of a book. The survivors’ mushroom-pale faces float like spores or spirits through the bald daylight and into the gloom. This is a home invasion, in truth, but a hesitant truce is made, and they are allowed to stay on as houseguests. Each morning, a shedmate’s stiff fingers push the door ajar, and in comes crashing the startling evergreen of the Irish forest. Like Katie to the Survivalist’s Calamity Jane, the interlopers begin to build a home – somewhere to live, not just to survive. Fiery montbretia begins to bloom in the garden, and tentative sunlight bathes the cabin in the woods. But when this fragile domesticity is inevitably compromised, from within and without, we find there are no real monsters here, no real prey. Just people burdened with the legacy of societal greed, deformed and driven by their own base needs and fighting through the sorrow to “do what they have to do”.
The Survivalist is definitely badass, but at what cost?
Fingleton has flexed his short film MAGPIE organically into a feature length journey here, and kept it tight as a zipwire. Mark Towns’ tense edit facilitates great economy in storytelling: there is little dialogue and immense trust in the audience, in our appreciation of the Jungian symbolism of gun and garden, bullet and seed. The sound design completes the immersive and immediate effect: almost every creak, tweet and shot has been carefully crafted and choreographed in post-production. The premise of both films was inspired by “peak oil theory”, referring to the point at which an economic need for perpetual growth forces production of fossil fuels to bolt, before tumbling into a rapid decline and causing economic collapse. Fingleton developed a fascination with the human face of sustainability: our dependency on credit, fuel, water, human contact. THE SURVIVALIST thrusts its characters to their limits, baits them with a glimpse of safe haven and examines their resilience.
The success of doomsday themes, whether it’s LA JETÉE, The Walking Dead or Fallout, reflects a societal frustration with Western privilege. It’s never been easier to access images of third world deprivation or frontline war atrocity, and those of us who eagerly discuss plans for a zombie apocalypse feel terrible middle class guilt and crave a bit of schadenfreude from the safety of the sofa. We’re dying to feel as though we could hold our own when the shit hits the fan; to know how we would change. The fantasy usually resolves into “I would be badass, come the breakdown of society”. THE SURVIVALIST doesn’t offer straw-man ciphers such as zombies or mutants, though, and so we must watch the living turn on one another. None of the central characters come equipped with an obvious back story; each performance has a rogue intensity which offers any or all of the three survivors as an avatar for the viewer, a way to explore this world vicariously.
The Survivalist is definitely badass, but at what cost? Neither he nor his new housemates crack either a smile or a snarl throughout the film. They have grown tough hides – the two women are hardy and stoical as wildebeest at a croc pond, but the Survivalist is both man and mouse. His instincts are sharp as a knife, and he’s almost permanently shimmering with glassy fear. We can see from a crumpled photo he keeps that part of him is still a little boy who misses his mum. It’s partly this loss which urges him to accept Milja and Kathryn’s initial offer of sex in return for food and shelter. Between two autonomous and battle hardened people, a sexual favour is a commercial transaction: one which doesn’t necessarily compromise dignity, or disempower. Milja has to coax the Survivalist through a little stage fright, and it’s clear that he’s no rapist. There are two almost equal sides to this particular power game. Once his new companions have won his trust, the lost boy sleeps in serene comfort, like a baby in the arms of the madonna Milja – but the triangle of alliances could shift at any moment. Fingleton doesn’t hold our hand and guide us through the darkness: we are cut loose without context, cues or clues, left to live in the moment and keep a keen eye on the screen. As the cabin fever mounts, though, it’s impossible to second guess the characters’ agendas – we are only twenty years into the breakdown of civilisation, and everyone is still wearing their L-plates as the plot veers to a dreadful, faux-optimistic conclusion.
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