Reviewed by Rama Gaind.
Director: Kristoffer Nyholm, Defiant Screen Entertainment.
Cast: Gerard Butler, Peter Mullan, Connor Swindells, Ólafur Darri Ólafsson.
It was the intricacies surrounding the true unsolved mystery in The Vanishing that attracted one of the central characters to the role. For Butler (Hunter Killer, Den of Thieves) – who plays the role of James Ducat – it was a drama on a big scale that evolved in an area that was not so grand.
This is a psychological thriller about the disappearance of three lighthouse keepers on an uninhabited island. It was the complexity in question that appealed to Butler. “The script is such an elevated piece of writing and it’s such an unusual story. It drew me in very quickly and I never knew where it was going to go.”
Butler says you can see his character disintegrating “in front of your eyes. You’re left with a shell of a man, yet he sees this happening and he comments on his own descent into madness. I’ve never read anything like it before and I’ve never seen anything like it before. It’s exceptionally emotional. You get to know these three men on such a deep level, and then this tragedy evolves. It becomes very moving while at the same time it is both brutal and terrifying. It scares you but you’ll be in tears for half of the movie”.
On an uninhabited island 32 kilometres from the rugged Scottish coast, the lighthouse keepers arrive for their six-week shift. As James, Thomas Marshall (Mullan, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows) and Donald MacArthur (Swindells, Sex Education) settle into their normal quiet routine, something unexpected and potentially life-changing occurs – they stumble upon a hidden fortune in gold, something that isn’t theirs to keep.
What follows is a tense battle for survival as personal greed replaces loyalty – and fed by isolation and paranoia, – three honest men are led down a path to destruction.
For director Nyholm (TV series Taboo), the main attraction lay in the story’s simplicity and the poignant drama within. He says: “these lighthouse keepers go from being normal people to protectors, to killers and murderers. It is quite a dark piece, like a story from my youth. The basic idea was very stimulating – three men working in a lighthouse – and yet we’re making a big drama that unfolds in this small space”.
Writer Joe Bone insists, that they simply wanted to say something moving about trust and the frailty of the human condition. “We believe that The Vanishing has all the shock and awe life can offer, wrapped up in a film that we hope will cling to its audience well after the reel stops turning.”
What is the life-changing event that occurs in the lives of the three main characters? If yours is one of the three correct answers, you’ll win a DVD of The Vanishing.
Entries should be sent to [email protected] by next Monday, 27 May 2019. Names of the winners will be announced in Frank Cassidy’s PS-sssst…! column next Tuesday.
