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Transcript of Seachd
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SeachdSeachd
The Inaccessible PinnacleThe Inaccessible Pinnacle
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SeachdSeachd
• Director: Simon Miller
• Writers: Simon Miller and Joanne Cockwell.
• Filmed in 2006 on the Isle of Skye
• First screened at the Celtic Media Festival 2007
• Edinburgh International Film Festival 2007
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SeachdSeachd
• First feature film to be made entirely in Gaelic.
• The film revolves around a young man’s quest for the truth about his parents’ death when he was a child.
• But other quests are intertwined in the action.
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SeachdSeachd
• As a young man Aonghas visits his dying grand-father in hospital, but memories of his childhood after his parents’ death fill his mind.
• He can only find some kind of meaning about his parents’ death by climbing the ‘inaccessible summit’ on the island.
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SeachdSeachd
• The rocky summit stands as a metaphor for a young Gael’s challenge to come to terms with the death of his parents and reconcile himself with his dying Gaelic-speaking grand-father who raised him and tried to instill in him pride for his culture.
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Seachd Seachd
• Aonghas is seen as a young boy rejecting Gaelic and Gaelic culture as something that is ‘dying’, or dead like his parents.
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SeachdSeachd
• Four Gaelic folkloric stories are told by the grand-father to help Aonghas.
• These stories (apparently from a ‘story-book’) are an essential part of the film.
• Unsentimental view of contemporary highland culture.
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SeachdSeachd
• The film takes place on two time levels:
• Aonghas as a boy, looked after by the grand-father.
• As a young man meeting his grand-father again in a hospital in Skye. His grand-father is on his death-bed.
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Seachd- An AnalysisSeachd- An Analysis
• This is a film about the young boy growing up, but it is also a story about the Gaelic world in which he is growing up in.
• A world he rejects and then seems to accept. Rather like his attitude towards his grand-father.
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AnalysisAnalysis
• Much of the significance of Aonghas’ struggle is reflected in the stories told by the grand-father.
• Are they traditional, or made up by the grand-father? Does that matter?
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The accidentThe accident
• At the very beginning of the film we see Aonghas’ parents and another person at the summit of the mountain.
• The weather is poor, and part of the mountaineering equipment comes loose. The gloves worn by the father play a significant part.
• On the way down, there is an unseen accident where the parents are killed but the third person survives.
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Aonghas/AonghasAonghas/Aonghas
• What are the circumstances of the death of Aonghas’ parents?
• Why were they on the mountain?
• Is there a connection with the first tale told by the grand-father.
• As he tells this tale at home to the children, the accident is taking place (Christmas).
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Aonghas and the accidentAonghas and the accident
• ‘it wasn’t a story. It was the truth’.
• The contrast between ‘truth’ and ‘stories’ is a major element in the film. Aonghas makes the contrast (meaning?); his grand-father seems them as part of the same.
• His grand-father filled his life with stories, and it wasn’t easy to tell stories from reality.
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The grand-fatherThe grand-father
• The grand-father is also called Aonghas.• The beginning of the film shows Aonghas
arriving at the hospital in Skye where his grand-father is dying.
• Aonghas is shown remembering that traumatic time (Christmas) when his parents died.
• Golden coin chocolates (Spanish Armada?). Suggestion of future choices?
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The First Story-the loversThe First Story-the lovers
• We are taken into the past- middle ages?. Two lovers. He is called Aonghas.
• It was a secret love. A. made a special balm from a pink flower.
• The ‘plant of the dead’ (frequent motif in the film).
• She suffers from a ‘sleeping death’.
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The First Story-the loversThe First Story-the lovers
• Only one cure was possible: the Crimson Snowdrop, a very rare plant.
• After seven (seachd) years of searching.
• He goes to the inaccessible pinnacle.
• He tastes the petals, but for his loved-one, he is too late.
• The slow heartbeat. 1000 years.
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AonghasAonghas
• After the death of his parents he comes to live with his grand-parents.
• Escape to Glasgow (later as a young man, he will)
• Rejects the world of his grand-father (music); speaks English
• He rejects his name (response of the grand-father)
• ‘they’re all dead’ (Aonghas)• ‘I hate Gaelic’ (Aonghas)
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The Second Story-Akira GunnThe Second Story-Akira Gunn
• As an antidote to hate, the grand-father tells the story of Akira Gunn.
• A dark time of hate. Highlanders persecuted.
• The landlords (early 19th century) had complete power over their Gaelic tenants, they could take all:
• ‘your name and your home and your tongue’
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The Second Story-Akira GunnThe Second Story-Akira Gunn
• The cottage of Akira and her father is set alight (to get rid of tenants).
• Lock and the Magician (‘an draoidh’).
• The Magician takes her under his wing, and teaches her ‘magic’.
• She discovers how to curse in Gaelic and learns a traditional formula.
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The Second Story-Akira GunnThe Second Story-Akira Gunn
• Later in a confrontation with the landlord, she curses those who have (apparently) killed her father. She magically disappears.
• Later the magician meets her again and she returns to her father’s cottage, to find him alive, and apparently well.
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The Second Story-Akira GunnThe Second Story-Akira Gunn
• The episode ends with the grandfather turning on the television (which he said didn’t work) and watches a movie with Peter O’Toole.
• Probably the 2002 film ‘The Final Curtain’ about an ageing gameshow host. (entertainer like the ‘Magician’ or even the grand-father?).
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AonghasAonghas
• A. practises cursing in the way he has heard it from his grandfather’s story.
• Later the grand-father takes A and his brother and sister out on the sea, which leads to another (rather humorous) tale involving a MacDonald and a Spanish gentleman from the period of the Spanish Armada 1588.
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The Third Story-the Spanish The Third Story-the Spanish ArmadaArmada
• A clash of two cultures?
• An exiled Gael on an island without fish nearby, suddenly meets a ship-wrecked Spanish gentleman.
• There is also a treasure chest which is washed onto the beach. Gold.
• But the gold could not help them in their predicament.
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The Third Story-the Spanish The Third Story-the Spanish ArmadaArmada
• They agree that MacDonald will go out to sea in the treasure chest.(As a kind of one-man boat)
• MacDonald lands but is thrown into jail. The Spaniard languishes on the island.
• The Spaniard appears to commit suicide (doesn’t), and arrives on the island where MacDonald has now escaped.
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The Third Story-the Spanish The Third Story-the Spanish ArmadaArmada
• An argument ensues about dividing the gold which the Spaniard has brought with him.
• The Gael and the Spaniard nevertheless remain friends.
• And are seen in an eternal squabble on the beach.
• Motif of the ‘eternal combat’?
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AonghasAonghas
• This leads to the scene where a ceilidh is held.• The very Gaelic nature of this event is evident
with the dancing and the solo Gaelic lament (theme of death returns)
• Aonghas seems to be beginning to accept Gaelic culture (goes to fetch the accordeon in his room, and plays a few notes).
• This idyllic episode is soon upset by the arrival of a visitor.
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AonghasAonghas
• This scene however is ruined by the arrival of the survivor from the accident in which A.’s parents were killed.
• The congenial atmosphere is destroyed.
• He had given A’s father his gloves
• ‘he murdered them’ (Aonghas).
• He again seems to reject ‘stories’ (the books he throws out of his bedroom.
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AonghasAonghas
• The appears suddenly to reject the world of ‘stories’ (Gaelic) in favour of his own rather selfish view of ‘the truth’.
• He won’t listen.
• The grand-mother become very ill, and asks her husband to tell Aonghas the story of Sileas. ‘The Girl Who Would Not Listen’.
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The Fourth Story-SThe Fourth Story-Sìleasìleas
• Sileas is young but very selfish; she pays the price.
• While collecting mussels on the shore, she sees a beautiful white horse, almost immediately a young man dressed in white appears, and speaks to her.
• He is possibly the devil, since his price is very high (her soul implied?).
• As she is carried away by the horse- the grandmother dies.
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The Fourth Story-SThe Fourth Story-Sìleasìleas
• Another approach to the story which might be possible is to view this episode as a version of the Kelpie- a mythological shape-changing horse that inhabits lochs and rivers.
• It attempts to lure children to ride on its back, but takes them to the watery depths and drowns them. (death motif again?)
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The ‘kelpie’ (each uisge)The ‘kelpie’ (each uisge)
• To what extent does the ‘kelpie’ figure add to the understanding of Aonghas and how he deals with the problems he faces?
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Aonghas and his grandfather in Aonghas and his grandfather in hospitalhospital
• ‘No one can tell the truth. Just stories’. (the grandfather)
• ‘Not in the real world’.
• ‘Whose world, your world or my world?”
• ‘Return to your world, you don’t have to stay to the end of mine’.
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Aonghas and his grandfatherAonghas and his grandfather
• A. leaves his grandfather and sets off for Glasgow (where he lives and works).
• In the woods in Skye we catch a glimpse of Akira Gunn, and then the grandfather appears in the back of the car.
• Is he really there or not? They return to the island (Skye).
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Aonghas and his grandfatherAonghas and his grandfather
• They return first to the grandfather’s house.• Dark, no electricity. Is A. there alone or with his
grandfather (both?)• When he wakes, we see him as a child again.
He looks at the map where the mountain is (as he did at the beginning of the film).
• He takes the book of stories, but does not open it.
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Aonghas and his grandfatherAonghas and his grandfather
• ‘They’ set off on their way ‘to the end of the story’. They are making their way to the mountain (first by boat).
• ‘it has to go back from where it came from’, The Crimson Snowdrop.
• Aonghas climbs the summit and releases the pressed flower.
• But you know the truth’, Yes, I do. The whole truth of the story.
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Aonghas and his grandfatherAonghas and his grandfather
• The boy Aonghas opens the book of stories, but each page is empty. He becomes a young man again.
• His grandfather is dead.
• ‘the truth is in the story’.