united kingdom, 1983, englishIt’s a small film to treasure. If you like this sort of oddball village meets outsider genre you’re going to love it. As someone whose favorite television show was once Northern Exposure and someone who once loved living in Scotland, I absolutely ate this up.
BILL FORSYTH
Local Hero
There is a genre that I love, but I don’t know if it has a name. It’s definitely a fish-out-of-water vibe, but with the addition of an eccentric village thrown into the mix. My canonical example is probably Northern Exposure, which was my absolute favorite show in high school. But, Twin Peaks, Gilmore Girls, and many others, would also qualify.
The primary elements are a town, or village, made up of almost impossible odd people. There’s usually some kind of unexpected regular visitors, like maybe a Russian fisherman, who the town nonetheless expects to receive. And then there’s our guy or gal, the newcomer who doesn’t really exist in the same existential plane as the rest. Joel Fleishman from Northern Exposure is the archetype.
I love this type of story so much. I love it to the point that I’ve been searching for a real version of it most of my life. Now that I think about it, that’s probably a large part of why I spent my college years in a place called Yellow Springs, Ohio. There’s just something so satisfying about a place full of quirky mystery. A little bit of a Wes Anderson vibe, you might say. Or even David Lynch, but without the actual danger.
On top of that, I spent a half a year living in Scotland in my early twenties, and fell completely in love with the place. The accent, the people, the mentality, the food, everything. I adored my time there. This film, combining that unnamed genre, with Scotland, was therefore just absolutely catnip for me. I loved every second of it, to the point where I’m now bidding on eBay auctions for the watch that the main character was wearing.