Eldra

The matter-of-fact acceptance by the Romani of the wonderful truths of their traditional beliefs is beautifully played out, in this miniature masterpiece, against the equal hatred and fascination of the settled modern community which surrounds them, under the looming industrial backdrop of the slate-tips of Bethesda, in nineteen-thirties North Wales.

The excellent ensemble of Welsh actors have completely identified with this nostalgic, yet still relevant, glimpse of a famous harpist's girlhood. This Eldra of the title is beautifully realised by the young Iona Jones, in a performance of simple honesty. John Ogwen's grandfather ('Taid') is noteworthy as a gently feral goblin of a man who comes and goes like the fitful promptings of a race memory. The creative sympathy of Robat's (Gareth Wyn Roberts) encounter with these strange and exotic folk reveals the strength of a fine soul, already secure in his diminutive frame, and provides moreover a tragic contrast with the fearful aggression of his siblings, already wholly identified with an Americanised culture of capitalism and cheap sensation. The contrast with the gentle family relationship which Eldra's people seem to maintain with the whole of creation could hardly be greater.

Indeed, it is a shock to see Robat's brothers, in one scene, force him to play a despised 'Indian' to their fearful lynch-minded 'cowboys' in order to punish his race-treason. It should, however, be noted that the implied critique is probably more pertinent to the unformed characters of young lads, than intended as any wider sociological observation of the adult world which they inhabit: The quarrymen were generally a rather civilised lot, and it is perhaps the absence of any fuller presentation of their cultural background that limits this film. Lord Penrhyn is also perhaps too much of an old-fashioned top-hatted Marxist caricature.

It is of course possible to see this simplistic view of the dominant 'Gorja' culture as a representation of little Eldra's still unquestioning acceptance of her own people's mythic rendering of the shifting cultural and historical scenes around them in terms of their own ancient experience: Fascinating it is to see how she naturally recasts the 'Castle' of Lord Penrhyn in terms of the vanished feudal world of kings and peasants. This vital mythology is not a game to her, as 'Cowboys and indians' is only a game for the local lads - however revealing it may be to the observer. It flows from the childhood of the race, rather than from the latest Cowboy film at the local cinema.

The great strength of the film is, in fact, its location of 'fairyland' in the most powerful intuitions of our common human nature, and in its ability to show how the simple goodness of such a natural world is equally accessible to the two children, who befriend each other across the great cultural divide which so troubles the relations of their respective peoples.

This naturalism in the presentation of childhood puts this film into the same distinguished class as 'Fairy tale: a true story', that wonderful meditation on private childhood and public trauma in an England bereft of all certainties by the Great War. By the same token, 'Eldra' also stands as a quiet reproach to the rootless and empty biopic 'Miss Potter', which touches on its themes only to falsify them by the sort of frenetic dramatisation more suited to such barbarisms of shallow wish fulfilment as are enacted in American shoot-'em-ups; for be it ever so genteel, 'Miss Potter' is just the kind of film to perpetrate unthinking formulaic violence on an innocent subject! 'Miss Potter', with its intrusive animations, presents a Beatrix Potter who is to be understood and justified as a precursor of Walt Disney; 'Eldra' presents a child of nature, to be understood on her own terms, and in her own time. Eldra's animal companions - the fox and the owl - are themselves. Like an icon, the Welsh film extends its reality out into the world, from where it came. The big-production feature draws us into a manufactured make-believe masquerading as reality, and traps us in its world of airless contrivance.

Perhaps the most abiding image of 'Miss Potter' is her young brother impaling another moth for his collection, whilst crying 'Die, you devil.' The film has stirrings of an uneasy conscience.

Eldra's Brown Owl seems to fly off through the artificial night which supervenes after the final credits at the end of the Welsh film, magically transforming that impenetrable silence with one surprising cry. The 'smaller' film clearly has a grasp of something far grander than the posturings and muggings of the mainstream offering.

You only need see the natural face of Iona Jones and then the mannered and grotesque over-acting of Renee Zellweger, for comparison, to know instantly which is the greater film.