Seachd

1. Seachd The Inaccessible Pinnacle

2. Seachd • Director: Simon Miller • Writers: Simon Miller and Joanne Cockwell. • Filmed in 2006 on the Isle of Skye • First screened at the Celtic Media Festival 2007 • Edinburgh International Film Festival 2007

3. Seachd • First feature film to be made entirely in Gaelic. • The film revolves around a young man’s quest for the truth about his parents’ death when he was a child. • But other quests are intertwined in the action.

4. Seachd • As a young man Aonghas visits his dying grand-father in hospital, but memories of his childhood after his parents’ death fill his mind. • He can only find some kind of meaning about his parents’ death by climbing the ‘inaccessible summit’ on the island.

5. Seachd • The rocky summit stands as a metaphor for a young Gael’s challenge to come to terms with the death of his parents and reconcile himself with his dying Gaelic-speaking grand-father who raised him and tried to instill in him pride for his culture.

6. Seachd • Aonghas is seen as a young boy rejecting Gaelic and Gaelic culture as something that is ‘dying’, or dead like his parents.

7. Seachd • Four Gaelic folkloric stories are told by the grand-father to help Aonghas. • These stories (apparently from a ‘story-book’) are an essential part of the film. • Unsentimental view of contemporary highland culture.

8. Seachd • The film takes place on two time levels: • Aonghas as a boy, looked after by the grand-father. • As a young man meeting his grand-father again in a hospital in Skye. His grand-father is on his death-bed.

9. Seachd- An Analysis • This is a film about the young boy growing up, but it is also a story about the Gaelic world in which he is growing up in. • A world he rejects and then seems to accept. Rather like his attitude towards his grand-father.

10. Analysis • Much of the significance of Aonghas’ struggle is reflected in the stories told by the grand-father. • Are they traditional, or made up by the grand-father? Does that matter?

11. The accident • At the very beginning of the film we see Aonghas’ parents and another person at the summit of the mountain. • The weather is poor, and part of the mountaineering equipment comes loose. The gloves worn by the father play a significant part. • On the way down, there is an unseen accident where the parents are killed but the third person survives.

12. Aonghas/Aonghas • What are the circumstances of the death of Aonghas’ parents? • Why were they on the mountain? • Is there a connection with the first tale told by the grand-father. • As he tells this tale at home to the children, the accident is taking place (Christmas).

13. Aonghas and the accident • ‘it wasn’t a story. It was the truth’. • The contrast between ‘truth’ and ‘stories’ is a major element in the film. Aonghas makes the contrast (meaning?); his grand-father seems them as part of the same. • His grand-father filled his life with stories, and it wasn’t easy to tell stories from reality.

14. The grand-father • The grand-father is also called Aonghas. • The beginning of the film shows Aonghas arriving at the hospital in Skye where his grand-father is dying. • Aonghas is shown remembering that traumatic time (Christmas) when his parents died. • Golden coin chocolates (Spanish Armada?). Suggestion of future choices?

15. The First Story-the lovers • We are taken into the past- middle ages?. Two lovers. He is called Aonghas. • It was a secret love. A. made a special balm from a pink flower. • The ‘plant of the dead’ (frequent motif in the film). • She suffers from a ‘sleeping death’.

16. The First Story-the lovers • Only one cure was possible: the Crimson Snowdrop, a very rare plant. • After seven (seachd) years of searching. • He goes to the inaccessible pinnacle. • He tastes the petals, but for his loved-one, he is too late. • The slow heartbeat. 1000 years.

17. Aonghas • After the death of his parents he comes to live with his grand-parents. • Escape to Glasgow (later as a young man, he will) • Rejects the world of his grand-father (music); speaks English • He rejects his name (response of the grand-father) • ‘they’re all dead’ (Aonghas) • ‘I hate Gaelic’ (Aonghas)

18. The Second Story-Akira Gunn • As an antidote to hate, the grand-father tells the story of Akira Gunn. • A dark time of hate. Highlanders persecuted. • The landlords (early 19th century) had complete power over their Gaelic tenants, they could take all: • ‘your name and your home and your tongue’

19. The Second Story-Akira Gunn • The cottage of Akira and her father is set alight (to get rid of tenants). • Lock and the Magician (‘an draoidh’). • The Magician takes her under his wing, and teaches her ‘magic’. • She discovers how to curse in Gaelic and learns a traditional formula.

20. The Second Story-Akira Gunn • Later in a confrontation with the landlord, she curses those who have (apparently) killed her father. She magically disappears. • Later the magician meets her again and she returns to her father’s cottage, to find him alive, and apparently well.

21. The Second Story-Akira Gunn • The episode ends with the grandfather turning on the television (which he said didn’t work) and watches a movie with Peter O’Toole. • Probably the 2002 film ‘The Final Curtain’ about an ageing gameshow host. (entertainer like the ‘Magician’ or even the grand-father?).

22. Aonghas • A. practises cursing in the way he has heard it from his grandfather’s story. • Later the grand-father takes A and his brother and sister out on the sea, which leads to another (rather humorous) tale involving a MacDonald and a Spanish gentleman from the period of the Spanish Armada 1588.

23. The Third Story-the Spanish Armada • A clash of two cultures? • An exiled Gael on an island without fish nearby, suddenly meets a ship-wrecked Spanish gentleman. • There is also a treasure chest which is washed onto the beach. Gold. • But the gold could not help them in their predicament.

24. The Third Story-the Spanish Armada • They agree that MacDonald will go out to sea in the treasure chest.(As a kind of one-man boat) • MacDonald lands but is thrown into jail. The Spaniard languishes on the island. • The Spaniard appears to commit suicide (doesn’t), and arrives on the island where MacDonald has now escaped.

25. The Third Story-the Spanish Armada • An argument ensues about dividing the gold which the Spaniard has brought with him. • The Gael and the Spaniard nevertheless remain friends. • And are seen in an eternal squabble on the beach. • Motif of the ‘eternal combat’?

26. Aonghas • This leads to the scene where a ceilidh is held. • The very Gaelic nature of this event is evident with the dancing and the solo Gaelic lament (theme of death returns) • Aonghas seems to be beginning to accept Gaelic culture (goes to fetch the accordeon in his room, and plays a few notes). • This idyllic episode is soon upset by the arrival of a visitor.

27. Aonghas • This scene however is ruined by the arrival of the survivor from the accident in which A.’s parents were killed. • The congenial atmosphere is destroyed. • He had given A’s father his gloves • ‘he murdered them’ (Aonghas). • He again seems to reject ‘stories’ (the books he throws out of his bedroom.

28. Aonghas • The appears suddenly to reject the world of ‘stories’ (Gaelic) in favour of his own rather selfish view of ‘the truth’. • He won’t listen. • The grand-mother become very ill, and asks her husband to tell Aonghas the story of Sileas. ‘The Girl Who Would Not Listen’.

29. The Fourth Story-Sìleas • Sileas is young but very selfish; she pays the price. • While collecting mussels on the shore, she sees a beautiful white horse, almost immediately a young man dressed in white appears, and speaks to her. • He is possibly the devil, since his price is very high (her soul implied?). • As she is carried away by the horse- the grandmother dies.

30. The Fourth Story-Sìleas • Another approach to the story which might be possible is to view this episode as a version of the Kelpie- a mythological shape-changing horse that inhabits lochs and rivers. • It attempts to lure children to ride on its back, but takes them to the watery depths and drowns them. (death motif again?)

31. The ‘kelpie’ (each uisge) • To what extent does the ‘kelpie’ figure add to the understanding of Aonghas and how he deals with the problems he faces?

32. Aonghas and his grandfather in hospital • ‘No one can tell the truth. Just stories’. (the grandfather) • ‘Not in the real world’. • ‘Whose world, your world or my world?” • ‘Return to your world, you don’t have to stay to the end of mine’.

33. Aonghas and his grandfather • A. leaves his grandfather and sets off for Glasgow (where he lives and works). • In the woods in Skye we catch a glimpse of Akira Gunn, and then the grandfather appears in the back of the car. • Is he really there or not? They return to the island (Skye).

34. Aonghas and his grandfather • They return first to the grandfather’s house. • Dark, no electricity. Is A. there alone or with his grandfather (both?) • When he wakes, we see him as a child again. He looks at the map where the mountain is (as he did at the beginning of the film). • He takes the book of stories, but does not open it.

35. Aonghas and his grandfather • ‘They’ set off on their way ‘to the end of the story’. They are making their way to the mountain (first by boat). • ‘it has to go back from where it came from’, The Crimson Snowdrop. • Aonghas climbs the summit and releases the pressed flower. • But you know the truth’, Yes, I do. The whole truth of the story.

36. Aonghas and his grandfather • The boy Aonghas opens the book of stories, but each page is empty. He becomes a young man again. • His grandfather is dead. • ‘the truth is in the story’.