‘Bait’: A foley-fueled fable of old against new
The conflict between old and new at the heart of Mark Jenkin’s ‘Bait’ harbours a profound allegory of post-referendum Britain
In Mark Jenkin’s latest feature Bait, fisherman Martin Ward (Edward Rowe) fights against the encroaching waves of tourism swamping his back yard. Skint and boatless, after his brother, Steven, (Giles King) converted their fishing boat into a tiny cruise ship, Martin relies on the minuscule hauls of sea bass he snags in nets dragged along the beach during high tide. Lobster would be more profitable — anything would — but with no boat to reach the best spots in the cove, and armed with a mulish aversion to cashing in on the tourism trade, Martin is forced to make do with the few notes he can scrape together each day. After paying his aide and nephew, Neil, (Isaac Woodvine) Martin stuffs his savings into an old cookie tin labelled ‘Boat.’
Martin has dug his heels in against the world of new business. It isn’t just his brother he quarrels with — middle-aged couple Sandra and Tim Leigh (Mary Woodvine and Simon Shepherd, respectively) are also targets of Martin’s wrath, having committed the sin of buying Martin and Steven out of their parents’ old home, which they now run as a bed-and-breakfast. The Leighs retaliate with equal zeal at every opportunity, particularly when Martin’s parking obstructs that of their customers. The phrase ‘six of one and half a dozen of the other’ comes to mind.
The film never falls into the cliché of old against young—it isn’t youths who are squeezing Martin out of business. They are as divided as the older generation: whilst Neil and bar girl Wenna (Chloe Endean) side with Martin, young Hugo Leigh takes up his parents’ mantle with concerning gusto, nicking Martin’s first lucky catch of lobster and robbing him of the opportunity to buy the new boat he so desperately needs. Crucially, everyone has chosen their side, although there’s something profoundly ironic about the redundancy of the entire quarrel. B&B hotels are by no means new business — the contrast between such an outdated argument and the film’s decidedly twenty-first-century setting is jarring. It’s nearly impossible not to conclude that a little effort towards productive discussion from any one of the characters would have ended the argument before the story even begins. The real villain of the story is dialogue — the characters’ failure to listen to others is Bait’s greatest tragedy.
When discussion does occur — that is, beyond the likes of morning greetings — the dialogue becomes hazy and confused. Heated tones drown out any hope of compromise or progress. One particular scene blends an argument about Steven’s choice of livelihood with a completely separate fight over whose turn it is at the pool table. The tandem scene soon devolves into an incoherent mess that is every bit as delightful as it is frustrating — these petty arguments don’t deserve structure or coherence because the participants have nothing of value to say. Their bickering is little more than pointless noise.
Speaking of noise, perhaps the film’s most striking feature is its sound design. Every component of Bait’s audio — from dialogue to effects to music — was recorded separately and stitched together with the video in post-production. This foley studio effect creates an artificial tone which is impossible to ignore. Every sound is precise and immediate as if heard underwater. The echo of a bass drum sounds periodically —to be precise, it happens every time anyone drops anything, which is fairly often. It’s a dark, foreboding sound, coupling with close-ups of clenched fists that threaten a violent end to the conflict. Small talk feels stagnant and superficial in this bizarre fishbowl effect, drawing our attention to the failures of dialogue that pervade the film from start to finish.
Another aesthetic feature is that Bait was shot in black-and-white and in a 4:3 aspect ratio. Though not totally unheard of (this style has become a recent favourite of Pawel Pawlikowski, for example), Bait is somewhat unique in its use of stylistic video noise like imperfections on a physical film. These effects are as superficial as the tourism industry Martin so detests, further cementing the irony behind the persistence of such old, tired conflicts in the present day. Just as one tourist rebukes Steven for starting his boat so early in the morning hours, despite having chosen to stay in a real fisherman’s cottage in a real fishing village, there’s something undoubtedly false about a modern film that goes to such great lengths to appear antiquated. If it wasn’t for the aforementioned ironies about the existence of the conflict in the present day, these stylistic choices might come across as pretentious.
As a closing note, it is worth noting that although the film is interesting enough as its own drama, it really excels as an allegory for post-referendum Britain. Radio noise is featured twice in the film, both times directly alluding to Brexit. Just as in Martin and the Leighs’ conflict between old and new, divisions in the UK and the EU have arisen out of nothing if not a failure to communicate. Whether we are to be critical of ‘EU bureaucracy’, double-decker NHS lies or post-referendum negotiation failures, the inability to talk through disagreements has become a common theme of the current political landscape. Bait doesn’t pretend to have the answer to all of it — if it did, it probably wouldn’t be disguising itself behind a fable of fishing — but its criticisms of those who fall upon violence and animosity in place of compromise are clear and scathing.
Scope and story: 🎣🎣/3. A well-written fable, Bait’s profound moral works harder than the story itself.
Performance and production: 🎣🎣🎣/3. Meticulously edited and heavily stylistic, Bait is distinctive as any of the year’s films despite its budget.
(Drama exclusive) Feels factor: 🎣/3. Though provocative and thoughtful, the story lacks emotional investment and at times feels hollow. It’s intriguing but neither moving, shocking nor inspiring. It’s no less of a good film because of this — however, anyone going to see a moving story will be disappointed.
