The War Zone

A family moves from London to rural Devon. The mother has just given birth, the father is out of work, and fifteen year old Tom and his older sister Jessie miss their old life. One day Tom sees his father and his sister. From that point the film proceeds through the eyes of a boy who does not know what to do. Tim Roth directs, moving from acting for the first and for a long time only film. Ray Winstone plays the father, Tilda Swinton the mother, Freddie Cunliffe plays Tom and Lara Belmont plays Jessie. The source is Alexander Stuart's novel. The method is distance. The camera rarely comes close, the scenes are long and static, there is no music. Roth neither dramatises nor explains; the hardest scene is shot in a single long take with no cut. The landscape is the second character. The Devon winter is grey, wet and empty; the house stands alone, with no neighbours, somewhere nobody can hear. Roth later said the film was connected to his own childhood and attributed his distanced treatment of the subject to that. It drew strong reviews in Britain and few viewers; because of its subject it never got wide distribution. Who it is for: viewers who can take hard British realism and difficult subjects handled without decoration. Who it is not for: the content is incest and child abuse, and the film offers no relief or resolution anywhere.