Uncanny Landscapes in 21st-Century British Cinema. The Pestilence in the Ditch by Lawrence Jackson (Edinburgh University Press, 2025)
The distinctive phrase chosen as the book’s subtitle comes from the author’s interview with Lila Rawlings, a film producer whose credits include Clio Barnard’s ‘The Selfish Giant’ (2013) and ‘Dark River’(2017). Lawrence Jackson uses the image to conjure up visions of “pestilent landscapes, through which lost figures wander.” In this provocative study, the British countryside on screen is envisaged as an impure anti-landscape rather than the place of benign beauty.
The films examined are shown to occupy a malign “disorientating interzone” inhabited by marginalised characters. From this it is argued that “What unites filmmakers and cultural historians of the new century is this shared sense that our present is a barren space where nothing grows.” This is a bleak but, in my view, accurate summary of the current state of British cinema.
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If this movie had met with universal critical acclaim or had achieved commercial success it would almost certainly have denoted its failure in artistic terms. Fortunately, therefore, it polarized the press and bombed at the box office.
