words: LLOYD GRIFFITHS
Owen Sheers’ lauded debut novel has been carefully adapted into a feature-length film. Lloyd Griffiths chats to some of the cast and has a sneak preview of the film.
The last few years have seen a relative upsurge in the representation of Wales and Welshness on screen. One only has to go back to Marc Evans’ beautiful Patagonia earlier this year to see that a maturity and self-awareness is engaging Welsh stories in a modern and global context. Amit Gupta’s directorial debut, Resistance, would seem to slot neatly into this story. Adapted from Owen Sheers’ lauded debut novel, and funded by the Film Agency For Wales, its plot – set in the Olchon Valley in an imagined 1944 where D-Day has failed – sees some familiar Welsh scenery and fantastic Welsh talent in the way of Iwan Rheon, Michael Sheen and Kimberley Nixon.
When I had the opportunity to speak to some of the cast, many were in agreement that the story is more transcendent than its setting alone. “I think the story could be set anywhere really,” admits Iwan Rheon, who plays the part of George in the film. “As long as it’s agricultural, you’d get an idea of the difficulty the women faced; both in their work and surrounded by the intense situation.” Rheon is talking about the fact that the opening of the story sees the women of one small Welsh village waking up to find their husbands gone – an absence which frames much of the story. German soldiers arrive to set up an outpost in the rural community and as the plot progresses, the soldiers begin to be quietly and ambivalently humanised as the women of the village learn to deal with the occupation and the unexpected disappearance of their husbands.
Tom Wlaschicha, who plays the part of Albrecht, one of the German officers, feels similarly to Rheon about the ambition of the film. “I really think it’s more universal than being about Wales. Although Wales is the oppressed country and the characters are oppressed, it goes beyond that. For example, Albrecht starts to become unlocked by the landscape in spite of it being both these people’s refuge and the resistance seeming to be part of it.”
It’s clear throughout the story that the Welsh landscape plays an important part in the cleverly paced film which lets the characters engage without an overt amount of dialogue. For those who have read Owen Sheers’ novel, you’ll know the tension and quiet humanity with which Sheers imbues the story. Whereas many war stories are filled with heroism and certainty, Sheers fills his with a sense of absence – but one made all the more hesitant by the mutual dependency of the women of the village who begin to feel with the occupying German soldiers. Vital questions are raised – why are they here? What is their nature? And do they know of the resistance buried in the valley?
As both screenwriter and novelist, Owen Sheers – who originates from the area in which the story is set – has an intense connection with the land, and his awareness and poetic voice is clearly linked with the landscape. Sheers himself partly agrees: “Well, in the novel, I almost see the landscape as one of the most important characters. Me and Amit really wanted dialogue to count, and for communication and language to seem precious because of it. But it’s not just about silence and dialogue, it is a quiet film and it has a European sensibility, so I think the characters are able to live and inhabit the landscape because of the space opened up by this lack of dialogue.”
As so often with adaptations, fidelity is an important question, but it is one which Sheers seems to be energised by. “For some reason, early on I was able to leave the novel behind and look at [the film] as a new way to retell the story. I can’t pretend it wasn’t strange, but it was also inspiring seeing actors lend their nervous system to the characters, and doing so much of the storytelling with their faces.”
I found myself agreeing with Sheers while watching the film, and it is credit to Gupta and cinematographer John Pardue that the film mediates with huge empathy between the resistance and those left behind in the village, while maintaining a hugely taut narrative drive. Resistance is wrought with the unspoken strain of each character’s decisions as they deal with the reality of occupation. Without giving too much away, it makes for an absolutely breathtaking conclusion. One which overflows with the tension poured into it, yet offering no cheap solution either.
Resistance is released in cinemas on Fri 25 Nov.