Many – myself included – were thrown through abit of aloop when Brit golden boy Ben Wheatley presented his 2013 fourth feature,AField in England, to an unsuspecting and sober public. Film critics tend to favour cosy narratives when it comes to generalising about the careers of the artists that they love, and following atrio of copper-bottomed bangers in Down Terrace (2009), Kill List (2011) andSightseers (2012),Field upset the apple cart and then some. Yet with alonger view, it’s afilm that anticipates an important side to Wheatley as an artist and creator, adesire to wantonly reject conformity and the rules of the industry game to create pure, personal oddities that you can either run with or reject outright. Either route isokay.
Bulk doubles down on the cheeky, audience-baiting impulses ofAField in England, yet makes more sense as aproject with awider view of Wheatley’s punk-eclectic filmography. In fact, “audience-baiting” feels like adisingenuous term in this context, as there’s definitely the sense that these films have been made in earnest rather than as cinematic rug-pulls aimed at the crazy top 1per cent of Wheatley fandom. Recalling works such as Jean-Luc Godard’sAlphaville and Orson Welles’The Trial,Bulk is aself-unravelling noir sci-fi which gleefully ties its various threads into impressive granny knots of self-referrential absurdity.
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The film stars Sam Riley as Corey Harlan, aslick, throw-back journo kidnapped and drugged with “heavy metal” by Noah Taylor’s weedling minion Sessler. He’s tossed into what looks like the living room of asuburban semi where he meets Aclima (Alexandra Maria Lara, Riley’s old co-star from Anton Corbijn’s Joy Division bio,Control) who becomes his guide through the nine-sided mess of areality that constantly shifts beneath the players’ feet.
Sessler stands in for the entire supporting cast (cops, transients, sages…), while Aclima exudes amischievous confidence that suggests she understands everything that’s going on here, and so should you. Corey, meanwhile, tends to have to express athousand shades of WFT as he executes an oblique mission to destroy aBig Brother-like tech baron called Anton Chambers (Mark Monero). All the performances are very game, and everyone clearly understand’s why they’re here and what the filmis.
As Corey does, you have to allow much ofBulk to wash over you and focus instead on the detail. Wheatley whisks action sequences out of quickie green screen fixes and half-done Airfix models of planes, cars and trains. The makeshift quality is all part of the film’s impulsive charm, costumes giving abig dressing-up-box energy and guns made from fat wodges of cardboard and Sharpie detailing. There’s atrend in alot of low-budget British cinema at the moment where young filmmakers are only allowed to tell their story if they can do so in asingle location, and Bulk feels like ameta-commentary on acircumstance that can be confining for some and freeing for others.
As evident from the above description, Bulk is Wheatley’s ultimate “not for everyone” offering, and as such he is taking the film on apersonal tour of British fleapits to present this miniature mind-expander to ahardcore few.The film doesn’t offer any clear revelations or insights, but it’s afun piece of homemade cinema that definitely doesn’t outstay its welcome.