The year 2001 brought a slew of tragedies across the world. One that flew over my radar (albeit I was only 11 years old in 2001) was the Foot and Mouth Disease epidemic among livestock throughout the UK.
CineDump Rating: ★★★★★
By December of that year, over six million animals were culled to stop the spread, leaving over 7,000 farmers without jobs and the meat and dairy economy on the razor’s edge of collapse. My grandparents were farmers in East Texas, and while they never had livestock, I couldn’t begin to imagine how devastating something like that could be to crops, much less living animals.
“And Then Come the Nightjars” is Paul Robinson’s directorial debut and is based on first-time screenwriter Bea Roberts’s original award-winning stage play. The premise is relatively simple on the surface. A Devon-based cattle farmer and widower named Michael (performed with solemn sobriety by David Fielder) is confronted by the UK’s government officials to check Michael’s cattle for any signs of Foot and Mouth Disease. The cattle is all this elderly man has left. He never calls them livestock or cattle, nor cows or animals; he calls them “my girls.”
To Michael, they’re so much more than a livelihood. They’re his only remaining family. One of the government officials, Jeff (played by Nigel Hastings) happens to be a friend of Michael’s. Not on the day of their arrival, however. And still, through bitterness and gritted teeth, they find their friendship grows deeper and closer from this slaughter of Michael’s “girls.”
Some of my favorite friendship films aren’t the usual feel-good comedies. They’re usually dark dramas. “The Banshees of Inisherin,” “Frances Ha,” and most popularly “Stand By Me” hit so close to home because even in the darkest of times, we usually have that one friend that we can rely on, even if it is one of us who caused those dark times in the first place. With Robinson’s direction, Roberts’s profound script, the performances, and even Simon Slater’s entrancing score and cinematographer John Craine’s nature-focused shots, this is easily one of the greatest films of 2023. It is an absolute must-see.
Jacob Scheer