Martin McCann
“THE SURVIVALIST” My rating: B
104 minutes | No MPAA rating
Nearly wordless and brutally unsentimental, the post-Apocalyptic world of “The Survivalist” looks a lot less like action-packed Mad Max territory than like Cormac McCarthy’s quietly desperate The Road.
In the wake of some sort of breakdown of civilization, the world is on a slow, quiet slide into obscurity.
The title character of Stephen Fingleton’s film is a thirtyish fellow (Martin McCann) who lives in a cabin deep in the Irish woods. He farms a small patch of land. He wastes nothing. (A stranger who stumbles upon his little domain is soon added to the compost pile.)
Mia Goth, Olwen Fouere
The film’s first 15 minutes simply follow the Survivalist as he executes his daily chores.
His solitude of seven years is broken by the arrival of the white-haired Kathryn (Olwen Fouere) and her adolescent daughter Milja (Mia Goth, looking like a young Shelley Duvall).
The newcomers ask for food. When it’s not forthcoming, they offer to trade some vegetable seeds in their possession. When that doesn’t work, Kathryn says it’s OK for the man to sleep with the girl. Just don’t come inside her.
The bulk of “The Survivalist” follows the uneasy alliance that follows. Are the two women content to stay on with the man — who has a shotgun but only two shells — as their protector? (Periodically the forest encampment is picked over by hungry raiders.) Is Milja a willing lover? Or are the visitors simply softening up their host, encouraging him to let down his guard so that they can kill him and take over his little plot of ground?
Eventually it becomes apparent that the Survivalist’s little patch cannot sustain three individuals. Something has to give.
Fingleton gives us a world in which our quaint notions of right and wrong are now hopelessly outdated. Staying alive is all that matters.
The film is shockingly grim (maggots wriggling in a wound, an abortion performed with a piece of wire, unabashed full-frontal nudity) but also weirdly compelling. The no-nonsense performances, Damien Elliott’s lush photography, and a music-free soundscape of natural noises come together to create an unsettling but perfectly believable environment.
| Robert W. Butler
Butler's Cinema Scene 
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