THE LAST GREAT WILDERNESS

UK, 2002, 95 minutes, Colour.
Alistair Mackenzie, Jonny Phillips, Ewan Stewart, David Hayman, Victoria Smurfit.
Directed by David Mackenzie.

Shot with digital camera (which makes the bleak Scottish highlands even bleaker), this is an experimental film that tries the patience of the audience. Two young men, one on the run, the other wanting to burn down the house of the pop star who stole his wife, find themselves out of petrol and stuck in the oddest of psychological retreats run with questionable pseudo therapies. It all looks as if they made it up (or failed to make it up) as they went along. It is difficult to work out the characters' emotions. Huge plot leaps occur without explanation.
The film received a lot of derogatory reviews, but bloggers decided to look at it serious and comic blend with touches of horror and were in favour of it.

Director David Mackenzie went on to quite a significant career with a range of films which included Asylum, Hallam Foe, Starred Up.


1. The impact of the film? Characters, plot, confusion? Serious and comic? Bizarre?

2. The subsequent work of the director and this film seem to seen in hindsight?

3. The Scottish landscapes, evocation, the edge, the title and the wilderness? The range of songs? The musical score?

4. The craziness of the plot, of the characters, of the lodge in the middle of the wilderness, those undergoing therapy?

5. Charlie, his motivation, vengeance, attacking the celebrity, the song about his wife and its being played? Going into action, the encounter? The car, running out of petrol, going to the Lodge, the encounters, the people in the lodge, the therapies?

6. The gigolo, pursuit, fears of castration? Encountering Charlie, travelling with him?

7. The lodge, the cult, the leaders, the paranoid, the young mother, the priest and abuse…, The couple managing the cult? The woman, her dying, the wake?

8. The hit men, their pursuit of this target? Charlie killing them? The gamekeeper, shooting? The role of Clare and her concern?

9. A portrait of dysfunctional people, comic touches, bizarre touches, the trampoline, the pursuit in the fields, the deaths, the brutality of the ending?