Shell: beautiful & brave film - less is more

Like an Edward Hopper painting come to life, Shell is a beautiful and brave film. It takes guts to make a film that slows time down so that it becomes almost unbearable. The characters barely speak and their actions are painful to watch. The claustrophobia is intensified by the big country landscapes but it's as spare as twig. At no point does the Director stray from his vision. Abandonment, love, fear, confusion, pain, sacrifice, hope – it has it all.
Scotland has an inglorious history in cinema from Brigaodoon to Brave, it's a catastrophic trail of romaticised nonsense, so I.m delighted to see that the much maligned Creative Scotland are coming up with the goods, Rather than listening to the so-called creative catcalls of Liz Lochhead and Ian Rankin, I applaud those that want to take Scotland beyond its past. Scotland should be a place about which films are made not simply a location for making films and that Scotland, needs to be more than a cartoon Scotland. Let's have more of this.