The Hide (2008)

Director: Marek Losey

Starring: Alex Macqueen, Phil Campbell

A film set in a bird watching hide? That’s different for a start. But does it work? Don yer anorak and wellies, you’re about to find out…

Being a birder meself, I’ve spent quite a bit of time in various bird hides around the North West of England. They’re peaceful places, ideal if I’m working on some writing, I can just zone out with my notebook. You close your eyes and the sounds rolling across the wetlands become supernatural – lapwing, curlew, oystercatcher, teal… It’s at once melancholic, euphoric and evocative; stuff starts to make sense in my head. I don’t get ‘twitchers’, they’re way too obsessive – the uniform wearing Star Trek nerds of the bird world. Entering a hide is sometimes like walking into a saloon bar in the Old West (or a pub in Whalley Range today); everyone turns to stare at you. I’m a punk birder, see, I haven’t got all the gear, I just use me eyes and a cheap pair of ‘nocs. Proper twitchers give you the once over, if you’ve not got a spotting scope and a camera fitted with a lens as long as John Holmes’s schlong they don’t take you seriously. If you’re already there and they arrive, they expect you to curtsey and step out of their way. Fuck that. So, I’ve met a few ‘Roy Tunts’ – actually he’s mild compared to some of them.

Over the years, I’ve wracked my tiny mind trying to come up with a short story set in a bird hide. Nothing sticks, possibly because I keep approaching from a ‘fantastical’ angle. Tim Whitnall’s stage play, from which The Hide is adapted, is simply a tale of mystery.

There are 567 species of birds on the British list. Roy Tunt has seen 566, he’s out to twitch the extremely rare and elusive vanellus gregarious, a ‘sociable plover’ (“Plover, as in lover…”) and engrave his name in the annals of birding history. Roy comes across as a lonely bloke, nattering to himself, berating a defective walkie-talkie and the never quite in range ‘Dennis’. There’s a touch of the obsessive compulsive about him, the way he places his notebooks and other bird watching paraphernalia around the hide in a regimented vein of fussy exactitude. Into this innocuous setting comes a scruffy stranger, Dave, a softly spoken Scouser who seems to know rock all about birds. He also suffers flashbacks – crows pecking at chunks of bloodied meat that look worryingly of human origin. Roy, suicidally snooty toward this uncouth newcomer, launches into a self-absorbed blather and amazingly finds Dave a willing though somewhat distracted listener. But when he nips outside for a piss, we see that Dave is armed with an automatic weapon. Inside the hide, Roy’s walkie-talkie picks up the Suffolk constabulary who are on the lookout for a dangerous white male…

It’s a sound idea, for your first feature, to adapt a stage play like this one. Two actors, one set, 80 minutes running time. Despite these restrictions it is a beautifully composed piece, from the claustrophobic interior of the bird hide to the glowering, windswept wetlands beyond. George Richmond’s cinematography has had the colour sucked out of it to match the overcast weather outside and it makes for some nice contrast within the hide.

For this film to work not only does The Hide have to be well cast, nothing less than the actors’ A-game will do. I’m pleased to announce Alex MacQueen and Phil Campbell are impeccable. They are aided by a script that fairly sparks with some wonderful exchanges, several of them very funny. It is critical because this is story told in dialogue, not action. Tis a pleasure watching these two blokes verbally circle each other, searching for common ground before discovering an unlikely, mutual love of power tools. But there’s always an edge to the atmosphere and while Roy is busy filling uncomfortable pauses with explanations of avian behaviour (“Chiff-chaff, I’ve arrived…”) and bird impersonations, you’re waiting for Dave’s patience to snap. MacQueen has the more difficult role, required to fill a sequence with dialogue to himself which would otherwise be silent. The skill of the opening is that it tells us everything we need to know about Roy just by watching him. Campbell plays an air of quiet menace punctuated by stabs of poignancy. When he recalls as a kid trapping wasps in a jar, the expression of longing on his face, to be that 9 year old boy again is a nice piece of work.

I might be over-reaching, but when the sound of a helicopter becomes prominent on the soundtrack I couldn’t help but recall – vaguely, I concede – Marek’s granddad, Joseph Losey’s Figures In A Landscape and two fellas running from ‘something’. I’d love to know if there was intent on Marek’s part here…

I’m in danger of over-hyping the film now. The Hide isn’t a classic, it does stretch logic on a couple of occasions. From a birder POV, some details are slightly irritating. Example: Roy having seen 566 species of British birds is nigh on impossible, but that’s just me being pedantic. I found it to be a smart change of pace (bearing in mind I’ve had Xtro up the ying-yang for a few weeks) but my reaction might be coloured by being a birder.

Interestingly, Movie Land appears to have finally discovered bird watching with another beak-based film migrating to screens soon, Pelican Blood. I’m getting a Trainspotting vibe from clips. Anyway, there’s not much else I can say without giving the game away. I’d like to bung in more dialogue excerpts but a lot of their parley is so loaded with portent it’s best discovered fresh. I won’t even post a trailer link; just go straight into The Hide and try not to read up on the film beforehand. You won’t need a pair of ‘nocs, just your eyes and ears…

Find the full movie here: http://tinyurl.com/3937vv8

Cheers, folk.

ThereWolf, July 2010.