FINAL WISH

a film by CraigDevine

LOGLINE: A bickering father and son learn about the value of forgiveness- despite great emotional turmoil, explosive arguments, and humorous events on their journey to scatter a dead mans ashes- and ultimately learn we are only fully alive when we are open enough to let go of the past.

TONE: A personal drama, propelled by character revelations, interpersonal conflicts and softened both by moments of poetry and a comic edge.

A father, Raymond Fullarton, and Daz, his estranged son, agree to scatter the ashes of their dad/grandad in a Scottish island. On the journey the ashes and their conflicting view of the dead man get in the way of them moving on with their relationship. At the beginning of the film the old differences and antagonisms of the past rapidly come to the surface during the characters interaction. This moment of confrontation ultimately culminates in a deeply emotional encounter in the ruins of their old ancestral home- but this in turn leads to some form of breakthrough- and from the flames of this moment they agree to enact the final wish of the dead man: Raymond must be guided up the mountain, blindfolded and with his hands tied, by the hand of his son Daz.

LENGTH: 12-13 minutes

SYNOPSIS

A FINAL WISH

There is the bellow of a ships horn.

The boat horn continues. A man, Raymond, sitting in a parked car at the Brodick ferry terminus, wakes up suddenly, startled, as though awakening from a nightmare- he knocks over a bottle of water on his lap. The horn stops. Raymond attempts to dry his trousers. He looks through his side mirror and sees the ferry is in harbour- a young man, Daz, comes into shot and makes his way to the car. He chaps the window. Raymond jumps out his side of the car and makes his way around to open the door for Daz. Raymond approaches him with a sense of optimism, he then leans towards Daz- as if to hug him- but he is rebuffed, and Daz looks down at his wet trousers, he smiles. ‘Have you pissed yourself Raymond?’ Daz says almost spitefully. ‘Raymond-Is it that again?’, in reference to his habit of never saying ‘dad’ or father. He grabs Daz by the arm, and goes to take his bag, but Daz resists this gesture, and Raymond relents- he then opens the door for Daz. There’s something of an ugly pause, its pregnant with menace. Daz walks around to the driver’s side and sits down.

‘I’ll drive Raymond.’

Daz stands at a fork in a road, he does a pee at the side of the road. His bag sits on a bench next to a memorial. He goes back to the parked car and sits in the driver’s seat. ‘You got the ashes Darren?’ He nods. He hands Raymond a letter that came with them. ‘From Old Ray?’ Raymond asks.

‘Yeah- its granddad’s final wishes.’

Daz puts the ashes on the dashboard of the car. Raymond, watching Daz take the letter from his jacket pocket, then snatches it from his hand. Raymond begins to read the letter. He mutters to himself, he looks visibly annoyed, simmering with some resentment. Raymond scrutinizes the letter, as if looking for clues- some proof of a weapon in the shrapnel of his father’s words. There’s a pause for a time, Raymond continues to interrogate the letter. He looks at some old photographs. In one his father holds a child, evidently himself. ‘Who doesn’t go to their own Da’s funeral?’

‘You don’t know what you’re talking about Darren’ growls Raymond. ‘

Raymond continues to mutter to himself as he reads the letter. Daz is visibly angry and suddenly leaves the car, slamming the door behind him. Raymond looks out at the back of Daz who sits on the bonnet of the car. He takes the ashes from the dashboard and pours some of the ashes into his hand. He puts them back on the dashboard and goes outside to see Daz. Raymond sits next to Daz on the bonnet- the ashes on the dashboard sit between them.

‘So this waterfall is half way up a fucking mountain? The cunt was too drunk to remember going anywhere’, Raymond informs Daz.

‘Well I’m taking his last wishes seriously, even if you’re not. When he got off the booze…he found god’, says Daz.

Raymond begins to laugh, he seems almost hysterical. Daz moves to go back into the car, but Raymond grabs his arm. ‘Darren! Sorry son- so we’ve to go to the old Fullarton farm?’ Daz moves to go back into the car and he gives Raymond a generous smile. ‘I just need to do a piss first’ says Raymond. Raymond goes over to where Daz was and opening his hand he throws down a pile of his father’s ashes- he then urinates on them- he smiles to himself as he does so.

The car accelerates down the road, like long grey fencing-sword razoring through the fields of green. After parking the car, they run into a derelict building, in the midst of a vast moorland that stretches as far as a darkened set of razor sharp mountains. The roof of the building offers them shelter- they look out into the moor through a window. Raymond builds a fire beneath the window pane. Out of the shadows Daz lights a candle, votive style. Raymond smirks cynically. The old man’s ashes are between them. Raymond is sitting on Daz’s bag, to protect himself from the wet ground. Daz looks intently around the ruins of the farm.

‘So, is this the family farm the old man grew up in?’ asks Daz.

‘Aye’, answers Raymond.

Raymond rummages through the bag that contained the ashes, he pulls out a tape recorder. ‘What’s that’, asks Raymond. ‘Grandad singing’, he answers. ‘Caterina?’ replies Raymond. This is the song he always sang when he was drunk, according to Raymond. Daz prepares to scatter the ashes. He asks his dad if there’s anything he wants to say. Raymond recites a poem about daffodils…’and they are dragged out dazzling wearing their frilly yellow tutus’. But his monologue is interrupted by Daz giggling, he says the word ’tutu’ and begins to laugh. Raymond looks furious, he takes one last swig of his flask and walks out of the farm house. Daz begins to laugh. Regaining his composure, he scatters the ashes. Raymond is outside at the side wall of the farmhouse- he secretly seethes with fury and hurt.

Daz takes out his grandfather’s letter and reads it. As though in retaliation he says ‘you’ve to wear this’, and he hands him a blindfold. Raymond is stunned, he reels a little. ‘Are you fucking joking?!’ he asks in disbelief. ‘No’ continues Daz. ‘He also said you’ve to have your hands tied behind your back’. He then adds, after a pause, as if to let it settle deeper.

‘I’ve to guide you up the mountain’, says Daz informatively.

‘This is all just one big practical joke for him’, cries Raymond.

Daz offers Raymond the blindfold. There’s a pause- Daz is still holding out the blindfold. Raymond threatens to leave. Daz tells him that would be true to form. They’ll separate, agreeing to half the ashes between them. Raymond’s half are poured into a Poundworld bag. Daz drops some on his jacket and trousers, Raymond is horrified. As Daz leaves he turns to tell Raymond his poetry was actually very good. ‘Add me to facebook?’ asks Raymond. ‘Yes’, affirms Daz.

‘Dad– I need the bag’ he says.

Raymond hands him the bag. Daz says ‘bye’ and he is gone in a flash. But Raymond is overwhelmed with joy, he shouts, ‘Darren! Darren! You called me dad!’ Daz leave without turning around to reply to Raymond.

Raymond gazes into the distance- suddenly a bird flies off and in the corner of the farm house is a flickering light, it is star like- and he looks around to see where it came from. Something falls to the ground. He goes over to inspect it and finds a hole in the wall. He puts his hand inside and pulls out a box. He opens it: inside is a headscarf containing his mother’s necklace and a very old bottle of perfume- he sniffs at the headscarf. Tears are streaming from his eyes. Raymond runs after his son- there’s a spring to his step.

Raymond and Daz are organizing themselves for the climb up the steep hillside toward the waterfall. Daz wraps the blindfold around his dad’s eyes- Raymond then puts out his hands obediently- Daz ties them behind his back. Daz, holding the rest of the ashes, leads his dad up the difficult terrain.

The immensity of the landscape engulfs them- it vividly illustrates the magnitude of their objective- slowly they ascend the mountainside. Eventually they come to a bridge over a cascading spring, the towering spike of a mountain peak looms over them both. Raymond feels the compulsion to confess to his son and tells him how embarrassed he was to see him- the reason was his step father’s money, and his own sense of failure: ‘Daz- son- the reason I hardly ever saw you was because I was embarrassed’. Daz responds by lifting his dads leg over a large boulder; he intimately, lovingly wipes some dust from Raymond’s hand. But Raymond refuses the budge for a moment, there’s a tense silence.

‘And you’ll add me to facebook?’ asks Raymond.

‘Yes- of course’.

They go on, they make their way up the mountainside. They both climb the steep ascent to the mountain, their breathing is loud, and faces are slightly reddened, sore with effort- suddenly Raymond stumbles on a final steep part of the hillside- he wriggles around on his back, unable to get back up, helpless, he shouts out. Daz is in fits of hysterical laughter at his dad’s helplessness. Eventually he pulls himself together and helps his dad to his feet- he unties his hands from his back and then Raymond takes his blindfold off. He is blinded by the sudden light, and blinks furiously. They walk on for a bit, and the noise of a large body of water increases the further ahead they get- eventually its all-consuming as the waterfall comes into view- they attempt to get closer to the raging torrent, and climb down onto the cliff edge, where the view opens to reveal a steep waterfall that divides in two shattering cascades. They stand for a bit and they both bring out their bags containing the ashes- in the distance, across a gorge, a light flicker’s, like a star, it flickers on-off, then vanishes- a shadow seems to cut across them both, as though a figure has passed-by. Raymond nudges Daz and gestures to him about the music- Daz then takes out the tape recorder and plays his Grandfather singing ’Caterina’. They simultaneously scatter the ashes down into the ravine below and it billows out through the air toward the magnificent whiteness of the falls.

The sun is low in the sky, like a fireball sinking into a pool of liquid lead. Two figures stand. Raymond and Daz, are silhouetted, as they stand side by side, gazing out towards the mountains in the distance. Daz waves goodbye, jokingly. Raymond nudges him.

A white line of water tracks the ferry as it sails away.

END.

]

LANDSCAPE of ARRAN

VISUAL STYLE

I would reference the poeticism of Lynne Ramsay, in the context of British Social Realism, as an inspiration, especially with Ratcatcher (1999). I want to include black humour, something employed by Shane Meadows, to accentuate the intense darker moments, as he does in a film like A Room for Romeo Brass. Splashes of humour from the characters illuminates as sort of vulnerability, an endearing idiocy, particularly in Raymond’s case. I think humour can warm an audience to characters, emphasising their likeability, and ultimately hooking them more rapidly to the character arc of the narrative. There will also be an emphasis on performance to propel the narrative forward, as in the style of actor driven films of Ashgar Farhadi. And like Ceylan, I want landscape as another character in the film, to demonstrate the magnitude of geological time and how it puts into sharp focus the pettiness of human relations and reveals to us our physical insignificance in the presence of such colossal forces- the landscape of Arran, with its steep granite walls, will be an important element in the style of the film. This landscape also includes various ruins, again representative of decay, metamorphosis, human relations, and the inexorable forces of elemental change, the very power of time. In Winter Sleep (2014), and how it can poetically represent the inner state of the characters. The landscape of Arran and the locations that will be used in the film are places I know intimately, having visited on many occasions, knowing people who live on the island, and having previously filmed there. The limited sets, repetition of locations and images- and with only two characters- lens itself not only to the rules of short filmmaking, but also enhances the potential for poetic resonance: sometimes from little comes abundance.

RESEARCH

Much of my research consisted of a continuation of work done in my undergraduate dissertation namely – what is poetic cinema and how does it inform filmic style? According to Daniel Frampton in his seminal thesis Filmosophy where he asks, ‘Can films think?’, he argues ‘Cinema is a world of its own’ ^[i] and so to lock ‘all film to reality disenfranchises the possibilities of film poetry’- and according to Maya Deren there is a ‘logic of ideas and emotions which is the poetic mode’^[ii], beyond the causal logic of prose narrative. In the more philosophical work of Kieslowski the incorporation of key objects, motifs, ‘a meandering, repeating and circular logic’^[iii], imbue images with a ‘poetic resonances’ we rarely see in other films.^[iv] In that sense A Final Wish, with those repeating images such as the flickering light, letters, or the ashes, will attempt to offer those resonances. Kieslowksi’s style has been described as ‘transcendental’, but Kickasola uses another term, ‘metaphysical dialogue’ as emblematic of the struggle for human meaning in Kieslowski’s oeuvre. Kickasola describes Kieslowski as a ‘liminal’ visionary who is a metaphysically concerned filmmaker^[v] a liminal art that acquires the function of a portal, a rupture, that allows the for this ontological revelation. And like Tarkovsky it’s a style that ruptures the commonplaceness of the everyday with an expanded metaphysical view of a wider reality. Nuri Bilge Ceylan, in many ways the heir to Kieslowski, with his foregrounding of resonant images that rupture normal vision to offer us a ‘direct communication with the nerves’, as TS Eliot described it. Good examples in Ceylan in Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (2011) when the apple drops from the tree and tumbles down the hill to the stream below, next to where a group of decaying apples have gathered; another is the horse scene in Winter Sleep (2014), when a horse is violently lassoed in a river, as it desperately tries to breathe- these are what Deleuze would have termed ‘crystal images’, compressed with multidimensional meaning and layers of time. I hope to achieve, in a modest way, the same with the blindfold scene for example, something that hints at a much larger meaning. And the blindfold scene, like the scattering of ashes itself, ties in with Deren’s preoccupation with ritual, and ritual allegory specifically- with its form consisting of a compressed allegory of the two main characters relationship. This in many ways is an attempt to establish in the film itself a condensation of images that ‘contain emotional ideas, feelings of thoughts, fragments of concepts’ and that will ventilate a vision ‘intentionally blurry in meaning’^[vi]. In doing so it will communicate a transcendental meaning that will by-pass cognitive linguistic structures and the logical centre of the mind, and in doing so, stimulate a ‘part of us is porous to the effects of meaning without ever being able to be born into signification through language’^[vii] For ‘liminal states appealed to Deren, and her aesthetic exploited these conditions wherever possible’ ^[viii] and ultimately the purpose of Wishes is to communicate a spiritual state that communicates something of perennial value about the condition of being human.

[i] Frampton, D. (2006)p1.

[ii] Deren, M. (2005) p 124.

[iii] Keller (2015) p53.

[iv] ‘ripples spreading from images that can encompass the richness of many moments’ Nichols (2001) p41.

[v] ‘Kieslowksi’s various themes might be called “liminal”, in that they convey various thresholds to the metaphysical in human experience. They also create a general context of metaphysical possibility throughout his films’ Kickasola, J.G. (2004) p38.

[vi] Frampton, D. (2006)p98.

[vii] Schefer, (2009) p112.

[viii] Keller (2015) p3

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Frampton, D. (2006) Filmosophy: [a manifesto for a radically new way of understanding cinema]. LONDON: Wallflower Press.

Deren, M. (2005) Essential Deren: Collected writings on film. Edited by Bruce McPherson. Kingston, NY: McPherson & Co Publishers,U.S.

Keller, S. Maya Deren: Incomplete Control (2015). Columbia University Press.

Deren, M. (2001) Maya Deren and the American avant-garde. Edited by Bill Nichols. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Kickasola, J.G. (2004) Films of Krzysztof Kieslowski. London, United Kingdom: Continuum International Publishing Group.

Schefer, Jean Louis. (2009) The Enigmatic Body: Essays on the Arts. Cambridge University Press.

FINAL WISH

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