Cinema at the Periphery

Islands at the Edge of History: Landscape and the Past in Recent Scottish-Gaelic Films

This chapter examines the Scottish-Gaelic-language films An Iobairt/The Sacrifice (Gerda Stevenson, UK, 1996), and Seachd: The Inaccessible Pinnacle (Simon Miller, UK, 2007). Produced on the periphery of Scotland, Gaelic films have been all but ignored in academic debates until now. Yet the engagement of the Gaelic oral storytelling tradition with cinema in certain of these films is on a par with that often celebrated in African cinema. Gaelic films in Scotland emerged along with a Gaelic Renaissance that has flourished since the 1980s. Accordingly, certain Gaelic films deploy epic, mythical , or otherwise allegorical narratives to reconsider stereotypical conceptions of Scotland’s remoter edges as somehow “lost” in the past. Instead, situating themselves within the storytelling tradition, and through a dynamic use of landscape, they examine how the periphery’s past remains active in the Gàidhealtachd (Gaeldom). In this way, in contrast to many previous films set in the Gàidhealtachd, these Gaelic films actively explore the potential that film offers for assisting the survival, if not the rejuvenation, of Gaelic culture. Scotland’s Cinematic Islands The Gàidhealtachd includes certain remote parts of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, in particular the Western Isles where the Gaelic language is still spoken by over 60 percent of the population. Once the dominant language in Scotland, Gaelic is now in decline, with less than 60,000 Gaelic speakers in Scotland (1.2 percent of the population). Even so, the Gàidheal156 David Martin-Jones Islands at the Edge of History Landscape and the Past in Recent Scottish-Gaelic Films 02 Iord_Part 2.indd 156 12/17/09 10:11 AM 157 Landscape and the Past in Recent Scottish-Gaelic Films tachd retains a distinctive linguistic and cultural identity that is evident in recent Gaelic films. There is a long tradition of films set on Scotland’s remoter islands, including , but not limited to, those in the Gàidhealtachd. As Duncan Petrie points out in Screening Scotland (2000), the island is a “literal and metaphorical figure” frequently used to represent Scotland, “a space in which remoteness or isolation is enhanced by virtue of its detachment from the mainland.”1 There is simply not space here for an exhaustive list of these films, which ranges from the ethnographic St. Kilda: Britain’s Loneliest Isle (Paul Robello et al., UK, 1928) through Ealing comedies like Whisky Galore ! (Alexander Mackendrick, UK, 1949) and cult classics like Madame Sin (David Greene, UK, 1972) to recent mainstream dramas like The Rocket Post (Stephen Whittaker, UK, 2004). With the possible exception of certain recent art films like Play Me Something (Timothy Neat, UK, 1989), in the majority of such films it is the supposedly dangerous, romantic, or fantastic attributes of the peripheral wilderness, those characteristics that have come to epitomize Scotland’s existence at the extreme edge of the world, that are evoked by a Scottish island location or setting. This stereotypical view of Scotland as a primitive wilderness was first defined during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, in particular during the visit of King George IV to Scotland in 1822, when Sir Walter Scott was responsible for solidifying tartanry as the overarching symbol of Scotland and Scottish identity.2 The deployment of tartanry in cinema has received extensive coverage since Colin McArthur’s groundbreaking anthology, Scotch Reels (1982), which was influenced by Malcolm Chapman’s book, The Gaelic Vision in Scottish Culture (1978). In the types of film listed above, the islands continue to resonate with mythical conceptions of Scotland as a savage wilderness, or a romantic, untamed land bypassed by the advances of civilization. The major difference in the Gaelic films An Iobairt and Seachd (both shot and set on Skye) is that they are based on native characters, rather than visitors to the islands, and attempt to tap into and recover a rejuvenative, local past from within the local landscape. This search within history both preserves tradition and ensures future progression of the Gàidhealtachd. It is this difference that ensures that these indigenous Gaelic films stand out from the other island-based films that are—with the notable exception of Play Me Something, which has some Gaelic dialogue and singing—their English-language counterparts. Before I analyze these Gaelic films, however, they need to be placed in a more localized context. 02 Iord_Part 2.indd 157 12/17/09 10:11 AM 158 D A V I D M...